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Flora is a Partner in the Employment team. 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.

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, Skilled Worker visas and Global Business Mobility visas.

She has developed a particular expertise advising individuals with exceptional promise and exceptional talent who wish to apply for the Global Talent visa and has gone on to assist many clients from all visa routes with settling in the UK through applications for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and British citizenship. More details of which can be found here.

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:

  • Acting as the UK Visas & Immigration named Legal Representative on the sponsor licence for national businesses in the care, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, engineering and retail sectors
  • Working with recruiters based in the UK and overseas to sponsor high volumes of skilled workers to the UK under the Skilled Worker visa to supplement existing workforces, including sponsoring more than 100 Care Workers for a Yorkshire based social care provider and more than 80 Chefs for a national food service company
  • Numerous successful Global Talent endorsement and visa applications for experts in digital technology, arts and culture and research and innovation
  • 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
  • Conducting a detailed audit of the right to work check and sponsor licence management processes for a betting and gaming company
  • 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
  • Advising recruitment businesses on IR35, employment contracts and terms of business

What people say

  • Flora Mewies is an exceptional immigration advisor, always at hand to give excellent advice at a moments notice, if she is unable to reply immediately then she will set expectations on timing of replies or ask one of her colleagues to assist.

    Legal 500
  • 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
  • Flora assisted me with my application for endorsement for the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa and I am very much satisfied with her assistance and perseverance for the best result. I am really impressed with her dedication and support.

    Ramesh Boya
  • 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
  • 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 UK Ltd
  • Flora's training session on Tier 2 sponsor licence management was informative, enjoyable and well delivered, especially as it is such a complex area!

    Natalie Allen, HR Manager, Connect Health

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