Gosschalks Solicitors

Last month, our Private Client department was busy drawing up free Wills in support of Will Aid, a national fundraising campaign run by nine of the UK’s top charities. Will Aid ran throughout November and saw Solicitors from up and down the country draw up Wills free of charge in the hope that the Will-maker would donate to the charity.

We helped lots of people to draw up a Will for free last month and urge other solicitors to take part next year to help raise money for the charities involved: Action Aid, Age UK, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, NSPCC, Save the Children, Sightsavers, SCIAF and Trocaire.

The Will Aid campaign has raised more than £9M in donations since it was launched in 1988 so is a great cause to be involved with. It’s not compulsory for the Will-maker to donate, but the suggested donations are: £85 for a single Will, £125 for a pair of Wills, £40 for a codicil to an existing Will.

The campaign also helps to raise awareness of the importance of having a Will in place. It is legal to write your own, however a professional Will gives you the peace of mind that everything is done correctly and your wishes will be carried out exactly as you planned.

We decided to get involved with Will Aid for two reasons. The first was to raise funds for some very worthy causes. The second was to encourage more people to ensure their Will was drawn up correctly and encourage people to come to a professional practice instead of opting for a cheap, online service.

Whilst signing up for a cheap Will online may seem like a good idea at the outset, it’s perhaps not the best option in the long term. Once you sign up for a cheap online Will, you are tied to that company to execute your Will and deal with your estate upon death. What most people don’t realise, is that this company will typically take a percentage of the estate equating to double, sometimes triple, what a decent solicitor would charge.

By drawing up a Will with a solicitor you trust, you can also protect assets upon death so they are not assessable should your partner go into care.

If you have any questions about drawing up a Will or would like to make an appointment with the Gosschalks Private Client team, please call Steve Walker on 01482 324252. Alternatively you could visit the Will Aid page on the Gosschalks website.

Chambers & Partners has once again recognised Gosschalks as a market leader. Whilst all of our core practice areas receive specific mention, it is the Licensing department and it’s leading individuals who take centre stage once again, ranked in Band 1 across the whole of Yorkshire and the North East.

Since 1990, Chambers has published the world’s leading guides to the legal profession and has built a reputation for in-depth, objective research.

They have a team of 100 highly qualified full-time researchers who conduct thousands of interviews with lawyers and their clients worldwide. Working with their editors, they identify and rank the world’s best lawyers (i.e. those who perform best according to the criteria most valued by clients – such as technical expertise, business acumen, prompt delivery, value for money).

This is what they had to say about our Licensing team:

“This Hull-based firm is noted by market sources as one of the leading licensing practices in Yorkshire, acting for a large number of national retail, supermarket and pub chains. The firm acts for two leading national supermarkets, a national betting shop chain and two of the biggest pub companies in the country.

KEY INDIVIDUALS Clare Johnson heads the firm’s licensing department and handles liquor and gambling licensing work for a number of the firm’s top clients. Partner Richard Taylor is “absolutely excellent” and “one of the most likeable people you will meet,” focusing on liquor licensing work. He is also noted by market sources for the quality of his advocacy before licensing committees and tribunals.”

Recently Gosschalks achieved a Legal 500 uk-wide top tier ranking. Our firm also was reported as a top tier firm at regional level for a number of disciplines and we have received high praise for our work across our other core practice areas.

However, it is the work of our firm’s licensing practice led by Clare Johnson and Richard Taylor which has once again caught the eye of the independent researchers as we continue to demonstrate its pre-eminence in this discipline across the entire UK.

The Legal 500 Series, now in its 25th year, is widely acknowledged as the world’s largest legal referral guide. This year, more than 180,000 in-house counsel and lawyers have been surveyed and interviewed globally. The Legal 500 is an independent guide, and firms and individuals are recommended purely on merit.

Nick Dean, a partner at Gosschalks, said: “It is extremely pleasing to see that we have been recognised for our excellence not only regionally but at a national level as well. There are some big players in the UK legal market and for a Hull firm to be ranked as top tier nationally in one of our main practice areas is a huge achievement and something of which all our partners and staff can be very proud”.

This week, several members of the Gosschalks team took part in The Smile Foundation’s fundraising competition, ‘Devil’s Kitchen’ at The Holiday Inn on Hull Marina. It was hard work and whilst we were pipped to the post by our competitors, Wykeland, a great night was had by everyone who took part.

Our team was made up of Steve Savage, Mark Teal, Sophie Sykes, Victoria Quinn, Simon Lunt, Paul Plaxton, Andrew Tarbutt and Richard Taylor. Some of us slaved away in the kitchen, whilst others took to the floor as waiting staff.

The three course menu was delicious (if we do say so ourselves). The starter was a chicken and bacon forestiere slider in homemade thyme bread. The main course was caramelised pork belly served on an apple bubble & squeak finished with black pudding and calvados sauce. The dessert was a raspberry and crème patissiere mille feuille finished with mixed berry coulis.

The event was attended by John Meehan, of Meehan Media & Comms. Here’s his round-up of the evening:

The simplicity and power of Devil’s Kitchen

By John Meehan, of Meehan Media & Comms

I was privileged to be a guest at a Devil’s Kitchen event at the Holiday Inn on Hull Marina and left reflecting on the simplicity and power of the concept.

What is Devil’s Kitchen, you may ask. Well, it’s an idea conceived by charity fund-raiser Andy Barber, of Hull’s Smile Foundation. It was, no doubt, influenced by the huge, renewed interest in cooking, as seen by the phenomenal success of TV’s Come Dine With Me and Masterchef.

Devil’s Kitchen pitches rival teams from local businesses against each other to provide the best food, presentation, service and experience to invited diners at a local venue. On this occasion, Gosschalks solicitors and Wykeland, the property development company, were crossing cutlery in the big cook-off.

The amateurs from the world of business greet the guests on arrival, prepare and serve the three-course meal, pour the drinks, and generally keep the show on the road and the diners happy. Given the relative lack of expertise on the culinary front, keeping the diners well “oiled” with drinks is clearly a key element of the concept.

And it all works – quite brilliantly! The food served sometimes has only the most tenuous relation to what is described on the mouth-watering menu and the presentation would certainly fail to pass muster on Masterchef, but none of that matters.

My meal was well-cooked, tasty and filling. I cleared my plate and so did others around the table. The presentational issues merely served to fuel the conversation around the table. We all enjoyed our dinner and the discussion about its unconventional features (I don’t recall previously having black pudding as an element of both my starter and main course!).

And we all enjoyed having “the suits” at our beck and call for the evening. More wine, waiter? Yes, sir! I think the bosses at Gosschalks and Wykeland may have found their true vocation!

It’s a cracking Corporate Social Responsibility activity which combines team building and sheer fun for individuals from the companies involved.

Most importantly, the evening raised a tremendous £4,940 for two very worthy Hull causes, the Smile Foundation and the Children’s University. I understand there were 80 diners, so they donated an average of £61, which is fantastic.

And the cost? Negligible. The Holiday Inn very generously provided the venue, facilities and the catering mentors free of charge, while the drinks were kindly covered by the competing businesses. It means that almost all of the proceeds go to the good causes. A brilliant model for maximising charitable benefit.

Andy Barber of the Smile Foundation now wants to take the Devil’s Kitchen concept beyond Hull and the East Riding. It certainly has legs and he deserves success in extending the boundaries of this simple, but brilliantly effective, idea.

But Andy also mentioned he plans to take the concept into schools, under the very clever Little Devils banner. It would retain the element of healthy competition (when was that ever bad for youngsters?), but also emphasise healthy eating, catering skills and teamwork. Yet again, simply brilliant.

John regularly blogs about local events – you can read more posts from him over on his blog. If you’d like to find out more about the Gosschalks team members who took part in Devil’s Kitchen, please visit our website.

Did you know that changes have been made to the Construction Act 1996 as of the 1^st of this month? Here at Gosschalks we want to keep our clients as up to date as possible with the latest legislation so thought we’d share the changes on our blog too.

The changes are referred to as Part 8 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 (LDEDCA) and as a result of these changes the Scheme for Construction Contracts has been amended too.

So what are the changes?

1. The identification of payments that fall under the Construction Contract and the right to withhold payment has been rewritten. There is now a beefed up requirement for the employer to serve a payment notice specifying the amount that he considers to be due to the contractor. If the employer fails to serve this notice, then the contractor has the right to serve his own default payment notice which sets out what he considers to be due. Whatever sum is specified in the payment notice must be paid unless a withholding notice is served.

This basically means that loopholes have been removed which previously allowed employers to avoid payment in circumstances where they had failed to serve without a withholding notice. This change is likely to increase certainty and cash flow.

1. ‘Pay when certified’ clauses have been abolished. It is no longer lawful to make payment conditional upon performance under another contract. It will also be unlawful for a sub-contract to contain a clause that states the sub-contractor only gets paid when the main contractor’s application is certified by the architect or engineer acting under the main contract. There is a limited exception for ‘management contracting’.

1. The adjudication rules have been changed to outlaw clauses that make one party liable for costs of adjudication whatever the outcome.

1. A contractor can now claim an extension of time for any period of valid suspension or delay such as winding down, which has enhanced their right to suspend performance for non-payment. The defaulting party is also required to pay the contractor reasonable costs and expenses incurred in suspending performance.

1. The Construction Act has now been extended to cover contracts that are purely oral or only partially recorded in writing.

It’s vital for all business operating in the construction sector to understand these changes to ensure they are not breaking the law. Gosschalks’ Construction Department will be running complimentary in-house seminars to explain the changes in full and the steps companies must take to prepare for the new regime. If you would like to attend a seminar please contact Steve Savage on 01482 324252.

Having previously helped Swanland Primary School Academy Trust to convert to an Academy, we wanted to share some advice should any other schools in the local area be considering this move.

Gosschalks is a specialist legal firm when it comes to setting up and converting academies under the new legislation created by the Academies Act 2010. In addition to being able to advise and provide insight at an early stage before a school governing body has taken the decision to convert, we can also advise throughout the complex process of conversion and moving forward afterwards.

Where to start?

We encourage schools to get in touch with us as soon as possible after a decision has been made to convert to an academy. This will allow an achievable timescale to be set for the staff and other interested parties to go through a consultation process.

Employment law plays a fundamental part from the early stages of converting to an academy, because there is a legal obligation to inform and consult with employees about transferring their employment from the local authority to the new Academy Trust. This is in accordance with the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (otherwise known as TUPE). It’s essential to engage with employees at the outset to ensure that they are behind the proposal and fully understand how it will affect them.

We have also found that it helps if the committee is small, comprising advisors, the head teacher and one or two interested governors. This should help to drive the conversion process through. It’s important to have a group of supported and committed governors as the head teacher will find their day to day workload impacts upon the amount of time they can dedicate to the process. The rest of the governing body also needs to be comfortable that all appropriate due diligence checks have been carried out.

It’s worth bearing in mind that you will require the services of accountancy and insurance professionals to help with the conversion, preferably ones that are experienced in this field.

The next stage

Once you have started the consultation process, we would set up the new Academy Trust to launch the process and, amongst other things, enable a bank account to be set up. We would also ensure you have all of the necessary assets you need including land and buildings.

At the same time, we would finalise the commercial transfer agreement with the local authority and prepare a report for the DfE in relation to the land and buildings and negotiate the lease of those premises with the local authority.

Additional matters to consider include the types of insurance that needs to be put in place, registration under the Data Protection Act 1998, VAT registration and the paperwork dealing with the opening of a bank account.

If you have any questions relating to the conversion to an Academy then please get in touch with our team by calling 01482 324252 or emailing info@gosschalks.co.uk.

Two Gosschalks team members, Steve Savage and Matthew Hudson, are founding members of the Hull Business Springboard, a group of young professionals who want to help improve the quality of business and personal development opportunities in Hull and the East Riding.

The group members visited Hull Prison recently to find out more about the working links the prison has with the local community. The visit was very enlightening and this article in the Hull Daily Mail explains what they saw.

Guests get a taste of life behind bars

 We’ve uploaded a lot of new photographs to our Gosschalks Flickr channel.

Team Gosschalks photos from our High Handicap Golf Day last year are on there too.  The weather was so hot that day, you’ll see what we mean in this photograph- it was absolutely boiling!

If you would like to find out the latest Gosschalks information, you should also take a look at our Facebook and Twitter pages- they’re packed full of information!

We regularly update our Facebook page with the latest news from the Gosschalks team – we even share a few photos with you!

We actively take part and involve ourselves in lots of different events and our Facebook page is the prime location to find out how our team have performed!

‘Like’ our Facebook page to keep up to date with our latest news and don’t forget to have a look on our website!

Our Twitter page is a great place to catch up with the latest in Gosschalks news!  Our tweets share information of how we get on at events and tell the twittersphere all of our achievements (even though we’re limited to 140 characters!). Don’t forget to follow us whilst you’re on our Twitter page!