Mary’s story

NCLS and two of its volunteers worked with Mary in her employment battle for more than five years. Eventually we helped her to reach a six-figure settlement agreement.

“I have been fighting an unfair dismissal case since 2019. It has been all consuming, affecting my mental and physical health and costing me friends along the way.

“I have been driven to the point where my children feared for my sanity. It became obsessive, because I knew I had done nothing wrong.

“But NCLS gave me my voice and the confidence to keep going and eventually I was proven right.

“After losing my job unfairly, I was initially represented by a local solicitor, but that didn’t work out and so I started to pursue the case on my own, battling through the pandemic with no means of income and the stress building up.

“Then, just when I had lost all my income and started to give up, somebody recommended NCLS. By this point I was at the end of my tether and had been in some very dark places and then I had this phone call from an amazing woman called Jo Plumstead who was a Community Volunteer and she was absolutely horrified at what had happened to me.

“It was her voice of reason and her solid practical advice, which started me thinking, ‘OK, maybe this is not absolutely hopeless’. She was just so calm and informed and experienced.

“At a preliminary hearing a judge ruled that one of my contracts was neither that of a worker nor an employee. I pursued every avenue I could to prove that my original contract has been a staff role affording me employment rights but came up against endless obstacles. It felt like it might be over.

“This was when I turned again to NCLS and was hugely relieved to be put in touch with Professor Owen Warnock, one of their volunteer solicitors. His practical advice around protocols and procedures and direct references to case law made me feel listened to and treated like an intelligent woman rather than a time waster.

“Armed with incontrovertible material evidence the tide turned and the Respondent could no longer hide the facts. I finally settled through judicial mediation rather than endure the further stress of the proposed four-day hearing. We reached a six-figure financial settlement which reflected the years of anguish to which I had been subjected. Just as importantly, the non-financial aspects of the settlement acknowledged the hurt and distress I had experienced.

“I had allies, but NCLS was the most important ally because it was a constant support and I was always taken seriously and somebody was always taking the time to see how they could help and that really mattered. Without NCLS I would have feared for my well-being. I’d already asked for help for my mental health when I was first navigating the sudden and traumatic loss of work based on false allegations of wrongdoing. I had been physically ill from the stress and was not sleeping.

“There are so many people out there who are being treated unfairly. Bullying behaviours have become the norm and there are very few rights for people who are working. But if you find yourself in the same position as me, I urge people to phone NCLS as they are brilliant and it just makes a difference to have someone say, ‘we can do this’.”

*Name changed to protect the victim. Pictures posed by models.