Ilinca Mardarescu

Head of Employment

01753 486 012

imardarescu@astonbond.co.uk

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Bio

Ilinca qualified in 2002 and has specialised in employment law since early on in her career. She undertakes work for both employers and employees alike, acting on a broad range of issues such as dismissals and redundancies, discrimination cases, TUPE, contractual matters and restrictive covenant claims.

Ilinca has experience of acting in all areas of employment law such as unfair, wrongful and constructive dismissals, TUPE matters, restrictive covenant enforcement, health & safety matters, all aspects of discrimination and many more. She has experience of drafting contracts of employment, handbooks and policies and settlement agreements.

Ilinca has undertaken advocacy at a number of Employment Tribunals throughout the country dealing with various applications, interim hearings and full hearings. She has bought cases at the High Courts for enforcement of restrictive covenants and has dealt with and obtained injunctions on behalf of her clients.

Ilinca has provided human resources support for various companies including being on-site to deal with disciplinary and grievance matters and assisting human resources in managing sickness and absences. She has also assisted with the employment law aspects of various mergers and acquisitions.

Ilinca is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association.

Notable cases

Acted for employers in successfully enforcing the restrictive covenants within their contracts of employment against former-employees. Obtained injunction and ultimately an award and costs.

Successfully represented a firm of designers who won a major contract on the strength of their designs and artwork. The employees of the firm which had lost the contract claimed that TUPE applied and they should therefore transfer to the new firm. The Tribunal found that the contract was won on the flair and artistic ability of the designers that had won the contract. To transfer across the designers from the old firm would be commercially unfair to the client. The reason the new contract had been awarded to the new company in the first place was precisely to be able to engage new designers and the client must be free commercially to choose who it does business with.

Successfully acted for a collective of employees in a ‘class action’ against their employer. Where it had been custom and practice to award an enhanced redundancy policy in the past, despite there being nothing in writing, the employees were able to successfully claim this had become a contractual term.

Acted for a number of start-ups and SME’s in advising and drafting of new contracts and policies to be put into place.

Worked on an in-house basis for large-scale employers enabling the HR department to have on-site assistance on a regular basis.

Advised nurseries and schools on Ofsted regulatory matters and dealing with matters revolving around safeguarding issues and employees.

Assisted in acquisitions advising specifically on all TUPE requirements and regulations.

Negotiated high-end executive/professional departures and securing substantial exit packages within complex and multi-faceted settlement agreements for clients.