Chair of the Board of Trustees
Arpita has been a partner of national law firms and former founding partner of a specialist employment law firm in the City of London. With 25 years of cutting edge litigation experience in high profile and career destabilising whistleblowing and discrimination cases, she has been individually ranked as a leading employment lawyer in the UK’s leading legal directories. Arpita has represented individuals in the Police service, civil service, health, education, financial, insurance and professional services sectors.
Arpita’s former law firm was involved in the landmark whistleblowing case of Timis & Anor v Osipov & Anor establishing the personal liability of individuals for damages caused by authorising the dismissal of a whistleblower.
Other successful high profile whistleblowing cases she has won include:
- representing an NHS Consultant whistleblower who raised the impact of cost-cutting measures on patient safety.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8500864.stm
- an interim relief claim for a whistleblowing IT sales executive against a IT/digital services company.
- representing an NHS Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, in his career-loss dismissal, discrimination and whistleblowing claim against an NHS Trust, reported by BBC News and The Sunday Times leading to a 7-figure award.
Arpita is now afreelance lawyerwith her own business specialising in conducting independent workplace investigations and conflict resolution as an accredited mediator. She is trained in assessing workplace psychological safety and in civil, workplace, transformative mediation and restorative justice techniques. She has a strong record of facilitating resolutions of litigated disputes and inter-personal workplace conflicts. Arpita has recently obtained an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS and has undergone training at Swiss Peace in global peace mediation.
Arpita has contributed to public policy by chairing and co-ordinating responses to calls for evidence and consultations as a member of the Employment Lawyers Association Legislative and Policy Committee (a 6,000 member organisation) on the Whistleblowing Framework Review, NHS Whistleblowing, the EU whistleblowing Directive, the retention of EU law post Brexit, the future of alternative dispute resolution, the use of NDA’s in sexual harassment cases and race inequality.
Arpita has a career-long interest in raising public awareness of injustice towards whistleblowers, of inequality, and exploitation of workers rights. She has worked with investigative journalists to expose serious misfeasance and increase accountability in a way that the law, in isolation, cannot. She has been a legal commentator on BBC News, BBC’s Inside Out programmeBBC Newsnight, in The Guardian and other newspapers.
Through leadership of her law firm she has demonstrated resilient governance, stable financial management and growth, and as statutory compliance officer for 6 years, she has risk management and regulatory experience.
Arpita’s Trustee and NED experience includes chairing the Harrow Hate Crime Forum (a multi-agency partnership), opening 32 hate crime reporting centres across the Borough supporting victims of hate crime; being a board member of Harrow Borough’s Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership Board from 2008-2015; an appointed member of the equality sub-committee of the Trustee Board of National Citizens Advice from 2015-2108; founder and Trustee of the Anti Racist Alliance Trust; Advisory Committee Member and volunteer helpline adviser for the Rights of Women Workplace Sexual Harassment Helpline and independent member of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) listening, learning and responding review board investigating the culture, practices and organisational values in responding to employees and members of the public who raise concerns and whistleblow to the health and social care regulator.
Arpita was professionally recognised as a ‘Hot 100 Lawyer’ nationally in 2011 by legal industry publication ‘The Lawyer’ for her achievements in equality and whistleblowing cases. She was winner of the Corporate Livewire Global Award for Whistleblowing Law in 2016 and a finalist in the Asian Woman of Achievement Awards 2018. Arpita is also a Freeman of the City of London and member of The Company of Entrepreneurs