Heather Allen

Practice Areas

Barrister (non-practising)

Commercial Mediator

Expertise

• Banking & Finance

• Employment & Workplace

• Property

• Clinical Negligence

• Inheritance, Wills & Probate

• Public Sector & Police

• Commercial Contracts

• NHS & Healthcare & Partnership

• Shareholder

• Construction - Domestic

• Professional Negligence

• Trustees and Charities

Career

Professional Background

• Full time commercial mediator

• Trainer in Conflict Resolution and Mediation

• Advocacy and dispute resolution service for claimants to the Employment and Benefits tribunals

• Called to the Bar (Inner Temple)

• Managing editor of a small publishing company

• Worked in the oil industry in advertising and publicity

• Management trainee Shell-Mex and BP

• University of London honours degree in English Language and Literature.

Heather Allen has been a professional mediator since 1995 and is a founder member of the CEDR Chambers Practice Group. She combines her experience from a career in the commercial world with her legal qualification as a barrister to assist in resolving disputes in a wide range of sectors. Heather has mediated contractual claims in many types of industry and handles complex employment claims and sensitive cases between professionals and their regulatory bodies. Heather regularly mediates clinical negligence claims as a leading member of CEDR’s specialist panel. One of her particular strengths is in working with power imbalance, perceived or real, and with overt inter-personal conflict. She has supported collaborative working initiatives in the public sector, and has helped to resolve potentially disastrous shareholder disputes and internal disputes between Board members, as well as professional indemnity claims and acrimonious inheritance disputes.

Historically, she acted as a volunteer adviser and advocate at tribunals for clients through the CAB, working with a wide range of people and problems.

She appears as a Leading Mediator in several Directories, including Chambers and Legal 500, and joined CPR’s Panel of Distinguished Neutrals in Europe in 2019.

She is skilled at dealing with multi-cultural issues having worked with many organisations in the UK on equality policy implementation, and also as an international mediation consultant working in dozens of countries around the world including Egypt, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Lebanon, Moldova, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa and the USA.

As well as having a busy mediation practice, Heather was Head of CEDR’s Mediator Training Faculty from 2005 – 2018 and continues as a lead member of Faculty, enjoying training others in the skills of mediation, nationally and internationally.

Heather is well known as a mediator trainer and coach and was the Head of CEDR Faculty from 2005 - 2018. She works internationally, training and assessing mediators, and also working with experienced mediators on training skills so that they can provide training for local professionals. Her experience of working in different traditional social contexts, including in predominantly Muslim societies and those where elder involvement in dispute resolution is the norm, adds a useful dimension to her mediation practice.

She also acts as a supervisor for experienced mediators and provides post-accreditation and advanced development for practicing mediators.

In addition to her training activities Heather also works regularly with the judiciary and other

professionals in developing the wider use of mediation. She has worked as a consultant with

jurisdictions abroad that are introducing mediation as part of their civil justice system.

Professional Memberships

CEDR mediator panel

Fellow of the RSA

Member of CPR’s European panel of Distinguished Neutrals

Fellow of the CMC

Personal

As a highly effective communicator, Heather is able to help parties to communicate persuasively with each other, and she uses her experience in negotiating contracts in the publishing and advertising industries to assist parties to devise and exchange proposals in a way that encourages progress.

Heather is fascinated by places, people and languages, and whenever she can, she will travel.

She loves to spend time with family, enjoy opera, dance and the theatre; play badminton and croquet, and swim in the sea whatever the temperature.

Clients

• “Your calm, confident approach and sensible down to earth advice was really appreciated. I am quite sure that we would not have achieved a satisfactory result ever, without your help, let alone so peacefully and so quickly.”

• “… very approachable and kept the momentum up throughout the day”

• “Her presence and approach allowed the parties to have sensible discussions without prejudice.”

• “Thank you very much for providing such an excellent mediation service … Your calm, measured attitude and inclusive, informative approach were exactly what was required for our case.”

• “She imported realism to the proceedings.”

• “Thank you so much for your invaluable efforts ... It was fascinating to see how the process worked.

Very grateful to you for staying so late and keeping everyone focused.”

• “Whilst the subject of the mediation required unique specialist knowledge, she exhibited a good working understanding for a lay person.”

• “Thank you for your hard work .. I found your approach warm, constructive and very professional.”

• “…thank you deeply, for being so patient, professional and human. I could feel that you understood my condition and this helped me enormously.”

• “Showed great energy and commitment to a very long day.”

• “Worked tirelessly and sensitively to bring the parties together during the course of the day, and helped bridge what appeared to be an unbridgeable gap.”

• “Worked extremely hard to keep settlement at the forefront of the disputants’ minds.”

Experience

Here are some examples of Heather's Dispute Resolution experience throughout her 30 year career:

Banking & Finance

• Exit negotiated with member of senior management team of a major bank

• Commercial tax dispute where it was alleged that non-cooperation had cause financial losses and embarrassment with the Revenue for a multi-national company

Clinical Negligence:

• Claims related to cerebral palsy and other serious birth injuries, with parents and clinicians present at the mediation

• Claim by a deceased’s family regarding fatal delay in providing care following a heart attack

Commercial Contracts

• Alleged breach of contract between owner /designer and distributor in a highly specialised security-related field

• Dispute over the termination of contract between a school and a nursery business to provide kindergarten services, where the school wanted to terminate a fixed-term contract early

Construction - domestic

• Several acrimonious disputes settled between builders or building firms and householders.

Employment & workplace

Heather has expertise in resolving complex employment disputes, both contractual and involving

allegations of harassment, discrimination, whistle-blowing and victimisation.

Discrimination

• An unfair constructive dismissal claim between a long-serving member of staff and a global company related to alleged agreed arrangements for return to work after maternity leave, including allegations of sex discrimination and discrimination connected with maternity and pregnancy

• Sex discrimination claim by a vice-president employee of a bank against her manager, and further claims against the bank for the way her grievance and appeal had been handled

Grievances

• Internal grievance against a university Head of Department by several members of staff, with Union involvement. Over two (short) days, mediated a withdrawal of the grievances with an action plan for future working

Pensions

• Claim by two ex-employees against a government department for breach of contract in relation to pension rights

• Heather is experienced in working with formal and informal methods of calculating pension loss.

Relationship Breakdowns

• Internal dispute between a manager and senior staff member, involving a number of headline themes, which was difficult for the individuals and disruptive for the organisation- settled over two weeks with 10 hours of contact.

Inheritance, Wills & Probate

• Dispute between siblings where land, dwellings and other assets were held by a company of which the Directors were the siblings, requiring unanimity for decision-making. Communication and trust had broken down resulting in stalemate

• Claim by a step-mother for reasonable provision against three surviving grown-up children from a previous marriage who were the beneficiaries of the father’s will

NHS & Healthcare - See also Clinical Negligence above

• Care and treatment package disputes between families and public bodies including related to funding.

Professional negligence

• Claim for damages against a professional body by a member who alleged that it had failed to determine a third- party complaint properly, resulting in substantial financial loss and stress to the claimant member

• Claim by a business against two separate firms of solicitors.

Property

• A highly-charged dispute between a litigant in person and a commercial premises neighbour, in a claim under the Protection from Harassment Act; an interim injunction was already in place, considerable costs had been expended, and the case had been set down for a 5-day trial

Property

• Dispute following the sale of property over the division of proceeds between purchase funder and former tenant.

Public Sector and Police

• Claim by a public body against a trustee, following erroneous allocation of grant funding to the trustee

Shareholder and Partnership

• Mediated the break-up of a publishing business, including division of customers, intellectual property, buildings and other assets