Flora is an Associate in the Employment team in the Leeds office.
She is an immigration solicitor specialising in helping employers recruit from overseas and helping individuals with visa applications.
Flora provides immigration and employment advice to both public and private sector organisations and defends a wide range of Employment Tribunal claims for her clients.
What she does:
Flora leads the firm’s business immigration offering across our three offices and provides specialist advice to clients across a wide variety of sectors on the full range of immigration issues. She assists with sponsor licence applications and has a 100% success rate. She also advises on sponsor management compliance, Tier 2 General visas and Tier 2 Intra Company Transfer (ICT) visas.
She has developed a particular expertise advising individuals with exceptional promise and exceptional talent who wish to apply for the Global Talent visa (formerly the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa) and has gone on to assist many clients with settling in the UK through applications for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and British citizenship.
Flora also has vast experience advising employers and senior level employees on a wide range of employment/HR matters such as disciplinary and grievance issues, restructuring and redundancy exercises, TUPE, exit strategies and advising on settlement agreements. She takes a pragmatic and commercial approach to achieve her client’s aims.
Flora conducts her own advocacy in the Employment Tribunal and defends a wide range of claims including unfair dismissal, race, sex, pregnancy and disability discrimination, whistleblowing and unlawful deduction from wages.
Experience:
Matters of which Flora has advised include:
- Numerous successful Global Talent (Tier 1 Exceptional Talent) endorsement and visa applications for experts in digital technology (Tech Nation), arts and culture (The Arts Council) and research and innovation (The Royal Society and The British Academy).
- Helping a London based digital technology start-up founder with a Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa and their dependants attain ILR.
- Successfully applying for a Tier 2 General sponsor licence for a North-East based company following revocation of its previous licence and obtaining new Tier 2 General visas and unbroken continuous residence for an employee and their partner.
- Receiving a spousal/partner visa for a Syrian refugee living in Greece based on their marriage to a British citizen.
- Successfully challenging a Civil Penalty Notice issued to a premier league football club for employing illegal workers with the result of the penalty being reduced to nil and providing right to work check training to HR and Management.
- Assisting with the closure of multiple businesses in the UK and Europe which involved both TUPE and redundancy consultations and acting as project manager for all European legal advice.
- Successfully defending an Employment Tribunal claim (constructive unfair dismissal, disability discrimination and breach of contract) at a four day hearing for a private care home provider.
- Advising a top London-based recruitment agency in relation to the removal of confidential information and anticipated breach of non-compete restrictive covenant and successfully negotiating onerous undertakings from the ex-employee.
Flora is a member of the ILPA (Immigration Law Practitioners Association)
In the words of others
“Every step of the way Flora Mewies’ assistance was critical for myself and my employer; essential to the positive outcome that we achieved. Flora’s third party advice and counsel, her presence, her writing and her editing of our submission documents were all timely and world-class. Very importantly, she helped attenuate the stress that we all felt in the midst of these issues. I would be pleased and honoured to work again with Flora Mewies.” Steve Gerts, Sales Manager, Eastern Europe and North Africa, Entek
“We were supported every step of the way, the advice was clear and detailed and provided promptly at every stage.” Ron Stower, Managing Director, Janome
“Flora Mewies has been extremely professional and very helpful throughout the whole application process. She thoroughly revised all the documents necessary and gave very detailed advice and recommendations regarding each and every aspect. Not only Flora is a very competent professional but also a very attentive advisor on a personal level. I would highly recommend Flora Mewies to anyone who requires legal assistance with a Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa application.” Alexandra Afanasyeva
