Abroo Khan, has now qualified from the Sherrards Training Academy and will be joining the Private Wealth team as a Solicitor.

Abroo has been a trainee with the firm now for just over two years, where she has been working alongside various departments, such as Commercial Property, Dispute Resolution, Corporate and Commercial, in order to grow her knowledge and understanding of the legal world.

Partner and Head of Private Wealth, Nicole Marmor, says, “It is brilliant news to have Abroo join our growing team. We have seen how hard she has worked throughout her time as part of the Sherrards Training Academy and we look forward to seeing her grow in her career with us.” 

With regards to our Trainee Solicitors,

Max Marmor joins the Commercial Property team as a Trainee Solicitor in London, after working alongside the Dispute Resolution team and  Commercial Property team as a paralegal for the past year.

We also congratulate Mike Jenkins who is promoted to Trainee Solicitor in the Commercial Property team in St Albans, after working alongside the team there for the past 10 months.

Lastly, we welcome Gabriel Cooke as a Trainee Solicitor to the Corporate and Commercial team in St Albans. Gabriel has been working alongside both the Employment, and Corporate and Commercial teams as a legal Admin Assistant for the past 7 months.

Sherrards Trainee Academy Partner, Michael Lewis says, “It is fantastic to see the Trainee Academy grow and see three excellent members of the team stay with us to begin their career as lawyers. We look forward to supporting them on their route to becoming Solicitors. I am also delighted that Abroo is qualifying with the firm after a highly successful training contract with us.”

We asked Anne-Maree Dunn, Client Partner and Head of Tax at WMT to sit down with us and talk about working alongside the teams at Sherrards. This comes as part of our client testimonial video project to showcase the Sherrards teams, the people we support and how we support them.

Anne-Maree advises business owners and individuals on tax opportunities and challenges and works closely alongside many of the team from Sherrards including our Corporate and Commercial, Commercial Property, Employment, Residential Property and Private Wealth teams.

These videos were filmed by Pearldrop Video Production at The Hub on Verulam.

To find out more about WMT and Anne-Maree Dunn, click here.

Leading food manufacturer, Around Noon, has acquired the Soho Sandwich Company to create an enlarged group with 800 employees.

Partner in the Corporate & Commercial department at Sherrards Solicitors, Leigh Head, supported the Soho Sandwich Company through the acquisition alongside Senior Associate Emma O’Meara from our Employment department who dealt with the Employment aspects.

They worked alongside WMT Chartered Accountants, ensuring a smooth deal.  

Around Noon was created over 30 years ago in Northern Ireland, and is now one of the major food producers and distributors in the UK.

The company will remain to be overseen by its current Managing Director, Daniel Silverston, as the company will continue to operate under its own brand inside the Around Noon group.

Daniel Silverston announced the deal in London on the 7^th of June 2023, where the story has now been released on BBC news and other various food article websites.

Click here to read the press release from The Food Manufacture

Click here to read the press release from Just Food

OneSky Flight has a large aviation portfolio providing the industry’s leading private jet travel solutions. The deal allowed our client to expand its airline booking service into helicopters as a complimentary business providing their customers with a complete aircraft travel solution. 

To find out about similar cases, please contact Leigh Head. 

Big Issue Invest has made a significant investment in VU X Earth Limited, the new holding company set up to acquire the group.

Music and arts ventures have been heavily affected by the pandemic so the new funding will allow for additional refurbishment and a training workspace for young people entering the music industry. Over the next five years VU will be collaborating with Hackney Empire, Hackney Music Service and Progression Session, a music charity that provides a platform for young artists and trains young creatives for careers in the industry.

The investment means they can get right back to hosting some of the greatest musicians from around the globe, supporting and inspiring new talent.

You can read more about the investment in Access All Areas, by clicking here.

To find out more, please contact Leigh Head. 

Screwfast Foundations Ltd are leaders in the design, supply and installation of helical piles and UK & International steel foundation solutions. They are well-known in the construction industry, having worked on prestigious construction projects such as the London 2012 Olympics and the government’s smart motorways programme.

The team worked to a tight timeframe to ensure that the sale took place in line with the requirements of the PLC buyer. The deal was structured with complex provisions regarding the existing plant and machinery of Screwfast.

This matter have been written about in the Construction Enquirer.

To hear about similar cases, please contact Kiall Bagnell. 

 They continue to undertake a wide variety of work including advising on acquisitions and disposals, reviewing and updating the full suite of franchise agreements for roll-out across the network.

The Sherrards Employment team also support their head office with their employment law and HR needs, as well as advising on matters involving the franchisees.

This year the Franchising team have worked closely with Winkworth to update their internal new and renewal processes for franchisees in their network with the planned roll out of a new franchise agreements to their network of franchisees (circa 110) in their network. 

To find out more, please contact Kiall Bagnell. 

The Sherrards Corporate & Commercial team and Commercial property team worked together to support with the sale of The Plough in Sleepshyde to Gorgeous Pubs (an independent pub company). 

This company are the owners of The Bull in Highgate and a local microbrewery. They reopened The Plough in October 2021 with great success.

Sherrards’ property and corporate teams worked together to complete the transfer of each constituent part of the business to the new buyer. 

This acquisition was led by Charles Hodder but also involved our corporate & commercial, employment and dispute resolution teams. The IOD Skip Hire site became Powerday’s sixth facility in London and means they will inherit the affiliated businesses of IOD.

The transaction was complicated, but we successfully completed the deal due to the team’s experience in the market and ability to work brilliantly across departments, bringing together specific expertise to ensuring seamless transaction.

On 25 May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and was heralded as the EU’s biggest shake up of data protection regulation to date.

In the run up to ‘GDPR-Day’ we were inundated with emails from businesses asking us if we wanted to “stay in touch” and asking us to re-consent to email marketing. Businesses scrambled to put in place GDPR compliant privacy policies by the 25 May deadline, with the threat of fines at a maximum of €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover on the horizon.

However, the reality is that many organisations had not completed their GDPR preparations by that date, and with the perceived grace period for implementation over the last year, many companies are still behind.

This week, over a year after the GDPR came into force, we saw the ICO issue its first public fine, hitting British Airways with a huge £183m fine (although still some way under the maximum 4% of annual global turnover that could have been issued).  Before this, fines under the GDPR had been limited. Over the past year there had been €56 million in fines issued against errant organisations, of which €50 million was issued against Google by the French data protection office and the balance split between much smaller fines throughout the EU.

Notwithstanding, what is obvious is that individuals are more conscious than ever about what data they share, who they share it with, and what those organisations then do with it.

The GDPR is intended to be an exercise of ongoing compliance, rather than a tick-box-exercise. Our top tips for achieving ongoing GDPR compliance are below:

1. Policies and Procedures

As a bare minimum, organisations should make sure that they have in place GDPR compliant privacy policies and cookie policies, and have systems and procedures in place to record their processing activities (including processing purposes, data sharing and retention).

If you are carrying out processing that is likely to result in a high risk to individuals, you must ensure that you carry out Data Protection Impact Assessments (“DPIA”).

This is not the end of the exercise, however, with the ICO stating in their annual review earlier this year that one of their focuses for 2019 is ensuring that organisations move beyond ‘bare compliance’.

2. Register with the ICO and pay the relevant fee

This requirement is easy to satisfy. Any organisation that is a data controller needs to register with the ICO and make payment of the annual data protection fee. This is one area where the ICO has been cracking down on both larger and smaller companies, and imposing significant fines for non-payment.

3. 3^rd Party Contracts

The GDPR requires organisations (data controllers) to enter into written contracts containing specific provisions with any 3^rd party that processes personal data on its behalf (data processors).

This is one area where we often see organisations falling behind, and particularly where personal data is transferred outside of the EU. Having in place a standard set of contractual provisions which can be included in any terms of service or supplier agreement can be simple way of ensuring that this element of compliance is dealt with.

4. Data Subject Access Requests

Does your organisation know how to handle a Data Subject Access Request (“DSAR”)? Over the past year we have seen an increase of DSARs, and in particular those issued by employment lawyers or litigators looking to secure a tactical advantage. Individuals do, however, have a right to access their personal data, and organisations need to know how to respond to these in an effective and efficient manner to avoid expending unnecessary time and resources or a breach of the individual’s rights.

5. Ongoing training

Many organisations will have carried out some element of training in the run up to the GDPR deadline last year, but it is always sensible to ensure that staff are kept up to date. Organisations should consider running regular refresher training, particularly for staff who handle large amounts of personal data including HR and marketing. This is key for understanding what to do in the event of a breach, upon receipt of a DSAR, and when to carry out a DPIA.

6. Appoint a Data Protection Officer (if necessary)

The GDPR makes it a legal requirement to appoint a Data Protection Officer (“DPO”) if (a) you are a public authority or body, (b) your core activities require large scale, regular and systematic monitoring of individuals (for example, online behaviour tracking), and (c) your core activities consist of large-scale processing of special categories of data or data relating to criminal convictions and offences.

Organisations can also choose to voluntarily appoint a DPO.

The DPO can be an existing member of staff, or externally appointed.

7. Work towards “data protection by design and default”

This means you have to integrate or ‘bake in’ data protection into your processing activities and business practices, from design right through the lifecycle. Data protection by design is about considering data protection and privacy issues upfront in everything you do. It can help organisations to ensure that they comply with the GDPR’s fundamental principles and requirements, and forms part of the GDPR’s focus on accountability.

To find out more, please contact Kiall Bagnell.