A soldier at Merville Barracks cannot take the Army to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal; the civilian storekeeper in the next building can. That line between service law and employment law runs through Colchester, and employment solicitors here advise on both sides of it: service personnel use the service complaints system rather than a tribunal, though discrimination claims can still reach one, while the civilians who keep the garrison running have the ordinary rights and the ordinary three-month deadline. Veterans starting civilian jobs bring questions about contracts and probation.
The University of Essex, Colchester Hospital, the city council and the schools supply the rest of the public sector workload: fixed-term contracts, redundancy rounds, whistleblowing, disability discrimination and long-term sickness. Private employers are mostly small: shops and restaurants in the centre, logistics firms along the A12 and A120, and the seasonal hotels, holiday parks and attractions of the Tendring coast, where the arguments are about holiday pay, zero-hours contracts and whether a summer job ended fairly. The same firms act for employers on contracts, policies, disciplinaries and defending claims.
Acas early conciliation comes first and must be started inside three months less one day from the dismissal or the treatment at issue; the regional employment tribunal then lists the claim, most often for a video hearing. A settlement agreement is not binding until an independent adviser certifies it, and the employer usually meets a fixed part of that cost.
Most Colchester firms will talk through a problem free of charge at first, quote a fixed price for a contract review or a settlement agreement, and charge a claim by the hour or in stages; legal expenses insurance sometimes pays.
Scroll down for employment solicitors in Colchester, verified firms at the top. The general page on employment law solicitors explains what to expect, the explainers cover employment law and the cost of an employment contract, employers have business law solicitors in Colchester, and employment law solicitors in Chelmsford serve the county town.
