24.03.20
Following UK Government guidance, all of our teams in Cardiff and London are now working remotely. Wherever possible, please send communications and documentation to us electronically.
If you are looking for legal advice relating to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, please visit our dedicated support hub for more information.
17.03.2020
As a client, stakeholder or contact of Hugh James, we wanted to provide you with a further update on the steps we’re taking in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
This is an unprecedented situation and, naturally, our priority is to protect the health and wellbeing of our colleagues and clients. But, we’re also acutely aware that we need to balance this with ensuring that we have systems and processes in place to provide a seamless level of service.
Our Business Continuity Team is meeting regularly to review our contingency plans and adapt our response to changing circumstances.
Our key area of focus has been to expand our remote working arrangements so that we can operate effectively as a firm – in a flexible and agile way.
After testing our approach, we’re confident that we have robust and secure systems in place which allow our colleagues to continue their work with minimum disruption.
Throughout, we are following official UK Government and industry guidance and have implemented the following additional measures:
- We are prohibiting non-essential work travel – within the UK and abroad – until further notice. We are calling on our colleagues to conduct meetings by phone or video link, where possible.
- We have cancelled all of our hosted events and are live-streaming where we can. This will be kept under review.
- All staff in our London office are now working remotely for the foreseeable future.
- We are reminding colleagues that we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can to protect ourselves and each other and to follow UK Government official guidance.
The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and clients are of paramount importance and we’re keeping our staff informed every step of the way. This is a fast-moving situation and we’re keen to keep things under regular review as the situation evolves.
We also recognise that the outbreak of Covid-19 will present many of our clients with unique and unprecedented challenges in terms of how they manage their businesses or organisations. Throughout this crisis, we will endeavour to provide guidance wherever possible on specific legal issues relating to your workforce, transactional activity, commercial agreements and dispute resolution. We will do this via blogs, streamed content, webinars and podcasts. Our teams of experts will also be available to address any specific issues or concerns you may want to discuss.
I hope this reassures you that we are doing our level best as a firm to continue with business as usual while being a responsible employer.
If you do have any queries, please feel free to contact your Relationship Partner or key contact, who will be more than happy to discuss our arrangements with you further.
With best wishes
Alun Jones,Managing Partner
05.03.20
The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and clients are of paramount importance. We want to play our part in limiting the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus and risking harm to staff, clients, suppliers and members of our communities.
We also need to carefully balance this duty of care with ensuring that mechanisms are in place to enable us to continue operating as a firm in a number of different scenarios.
Throughout, we are following official government advice and will adopt a pragmatic and sensible approach. We have plans in place to take a series of stepped measures, depending on the level of severity, which mirrors the UK government strategy of contain/delay/mitigate.
At this moment in time, and in line with a number of other organisations, we have decided to implement the following measures for the foreseeable future:
- We are prohibiting non-essential work travel – within the UK and abroad – until further notice. We are calling on our colleagues to conduct meetings by phone or video link, where possible.
- We are cancelling all of our hosted events until June. This will be kept under review.
- We will still hold client meetings in our Cardiff and London offices, but we politely request clients to cancel meetings if they consider they are at risk.
- We are reminding colleagues that we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can to protect ourselves and each other and to follow UK Government official guidance.
This is a fast-moving situation and we’re keen to keep things under regular review. Our Business Continuity team are meeting regularly and we’re doing our level best as a firm to continue with business as usual while being a responsible employer.