From secondary school teacher to partner in a law firm
Career paths are not always straight forward. Simon Pathé’s certainly wasn’t. He was one of four new partners who chose to join law firm Willans of late, and he sat down with Raikes to explain why.
Dear readers,
Welcome to the Monday edition of The Raikes Journal.
Today we go big on a big interview we were lucky enough to do with Simon Pathé, one of the newest partners at Gloucestershire-headquartered law firm Willans.
We were interested in speaking to him for so many reasons - because of his unusual path into the legal profession, because he chose to jump ship from a big Bristol firm to Gloucestershire, and because it promised to give us a little more insight into one of the county’s most highly regarded law firms.
Pathé also happens to be the author of the expert insight piece we flag below too, which takes a look at some of the changes coming down the line ref the Employment Rights Bill that, if you run a business, you really need to take a look at.
Before that, we also feature a few words on an exciting new hotel development proposed for Gloucester city centre, our usual business briefing notes and news of a charity - part of our ongoing efforts to bring you closer to the many such organisations helping make Gloucestershire in which such an incredible place to live and work.
Have a great week.
For every person you refer to The Raikes Journal’s email service you get points towards a free membership allowing you to see beyond our paywalls. Please do sign up (free or otherwise), send the referral link to a friend or colleague, and help us grow.
Andrew Merrell (editor).
News: Former UK business headquarters could become city centre hotel
With all eyes continually pulled towards other city centre developments in Gloucester, like The Forum, one of the city’s major empty offices has been all but forgotten – until now.
If all goes to plan, Gloucester could soon have a new city centre hotel with a bar and outdoor seating area, with plans emerging for an exciting development close to the city’s park.
Businessman Ahmet Gayretli wants to redevelop the former home of Ecclesiastical Insurance at Beaufort House in Brunswick Road.
Plans have now been filed with Gloucester City Council to turn the disused office block and historic house into 67 self-contained flats and a 36-bed hotel.
Dorian Wragg, a partner at property experts Bruton Knowles, told Raikes: “I think a residential scheme is a fantastic idea. Does the city need a hotel?
“A quality development is what the city needs to aim for. I think Gloucester is really getting traction and moving away from Cheltenham.
“People are buying into the idea of somewhere different, somewhere edgier than Cheltenham, and Gloucester needs to keep that momentum going.”
Luke Lutman, president of the Gloucester Chamber of Commerce, said: “Bringing empty buildings back into use is vital to utilise the spaces we have, breathing new life into the quieter corners of the city.
“This proposed development and projects like it, encourage people to move into the area, stay the night as well as providing jobs for local people.”
The three-storey house is Grade II listed and is part of an early 19th Century terraced row of houses associated with the Gloucester Spa Company dating back to 1852.
There would be no changes to the exterior, but the lower ground floor would become an hotel office, storage and plant room as well as a kitchen and two dining rooms for customers.
The upper ground floor would become the hotel reception, a lounge and bar area as well as 10 bedrooms, with the second floor home to 14 bedrooms including a family suite, and the third floor will have 12 rooms.
The proposals also include an outdoor seating terrace to the rear of the building which would be accessed via the main dining room. The site would have seven parking spaces for guests and four for staff and two Sheffield cycle parking stands to the side of the main entrance.
The proposals for self-contained flats include a mixture of one to two bed flats.
Your briefing notes...
🗳️ Voters will head to the polls on Thursday, May 1 to elect their representatives on Gloucestershire County Council. The authority, which has a budget of more than £665m this year, is responsible for the county’s roads and highways, education, social care, libraries, and environmental services. The Conservatives have led Shire Hall for almost 20 years. There are 55 seats up for grabs after two new divisions were created. Here’s a list of all the candidates standing in all the areas.
🚗🚌🚗🚌🚗🚑 One man’s foot is run over, traffic chaos, overcrowding, emergency services unable to get through. How one Cotswold village's appeal to tourists has reached a whole new level! If ever a story brought to mind the refrain ‘be careful what you wish’ for it’s this one. Attracting a few tourists to drive your economy is often a positive thing. For Bibury, it’s been so successful the village of just 100 residents now feels besieged. Read more.
🍔🏗️ Time is running out if you have something to say about a certain popular burger brand's plans to convert a former Cheltenham restaurant into the latest branch of its fast-food chain. McDonald’s wants permission to serve food and drink until midnight every day at what would be their third restaurant in Cheltenham. The American fast food chain has plans to open up shop at the site of the former TGI Friday’s restaurant at 374 Gloucester Road next to the Premier Inn. Read more.
🏗️ Paul Fowles has become a director of the construction division at major Gloucester building business Barnwood, with Will Steel becoming commercial director and Dylan Hill, estimating director. Fowles and Steel have been with the firm for five years already, with Hill having been at the Gloucester business for 19 years. Barnwood has three divisions - construction, shopfitting and interiors and general works.
🍽️ A new restaurant is coming to Cheltenham. The Good Times House, a private members club has won permission to fit out and open a restaurant in the lower ground floors of numbers seven, eight and nine Imperial Square. The club is already based in number eight. The Grade II* listed terraced buildings are opposite Cheltenham Town Hall.
Expert insight: Employment Rights Bill and changes to statutory sick pay
As part of the all new Employment Rights Bill, it’s likely that changes to statutory sick pay could significantly impact you and your business.
*As we build up to the big interview published below we felt this expert article fitted perfectly - as it’s by Willans partner Simon Pathé, who is also the subject of the main long read.
When the Employment Rights Bill becomes law, one of the major changes to affect employers will be the day one right for employees to be paid statutory sick pay (SSP) from the first day of sickness absence.
This important change – which is anticipated to come into force in April 2026, though yet to be confirmed – will have significant implications for which employers should start preparing now.
In addition to the removal of the three-day waiting period to qualify for SSP, all employees – regardless of how little they work or earn – will qualify to be paid 80 per cent of their salary up to a cap of £118.75.
This will create an additional financial burden for employers dealing with short-term sickness absences, particularly in respect of employees who repeatedly take single days off sick.
If an employer provides enhanced sick pay – which works in line with the provisions of SSP – it will need to be reviewed to avoid employees becoming entitled to receive full pay from day one without any need for a contractual change.
You can read the full expert article on the Cheltenham law firm’s website here.
Your featured charity: The Cotswold Listener
Today The Raikes Journal has a lovely conversation with a charity called The Cotswold Listener, one of a group providing audio recordings of news stories and articles of interest to the visually impared across Gloucestershire. June Little, its chair of trustees, asked if Raikes would be happy for its readers to use its articles. We said ‘yes’, of course. “The youngest listener we currently have is 22, and the oldest has just turned 102,” said Little, a former senior HR director who worked for firms including Zurich, Thames Water, Eagle Star and RWE. “We have 62 volunteers too.” Recordings of articles are made at the charity’s Rodney Road studio. It also provides work experience, especially for those on the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, and also placements too. Despite the team being entirely volunteers, the vital service all cost money, of course. You can find out more about its invaluable work here.
You never know, you might be able to hear an article or two from Raikes. Speaking of audio - if you download the Substack app, log into that and search for The Raikes Journal, you can have all our articles read to you. It’s a feature of the website we’ve enabled.
* The Raikes Journal is a community interest company. Everything you read by us is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls often put on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You will be able to comment on our stories too.
You can sign up to receive your two extra editions a week and see past all our paywalls for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. Or go all in and become one of our Founding Partners or Founding Members!
From secondary school teacher to partner in a law firm
Career paths are not always straight forward. Simon Pathé’s certainly wasn’t. He was one of four new partners who chose to join law firm Willans of late, and he sat down with Raikes to explain why.
By Andrew Merrell.
Simon Pathé and the team at Willans are already providing training for businesses around the forthcoming changes to the Employment Rights Bill.
Big changes are pending; businesses are already seeking reassurance and Pathé, who joined Willans at the tail end of 2024 as a new partner, is happy to oblige.
It’s exactly where he likes to be - face-to-face, building relationships with clients, be they businesses or individuals, and helping them find the solutions they want.
Pathé sat down with Raikes as part of its interview series with senior Gloucestershire business figures. After an unusual career path, he is relatively new to the county, and it’s always interesting to hear what people think of Gloucestershire.
We also discussed how he became so interested in human rights, criminal law, employment law, and found his way to Gloucestershire via Surrey, Kenya, Birmingham, Wales and Bristol.
And why he feels confident to dismiss recent concerns triggered by President Donald Trump and right-hand man Elon Musk’s seeming war on diversity, equity and inclusivity as less relevant to UK businesses.
“I wanted to be a criminal barrister. However, after being called to the Bar, I went to work for a race equality charity in Cardiff. That led to employment law. I just loved it,” said Pathé, making it sound easy.
“It’s about people, but it can be about business too.
“Fairness is very important to me. It is not always the big bad employer who is being challenged. Sometimes it is the other way round.”
Law isn’t where his working life started, however.
“I went to the University of Surrey and studied English and history and actually became a teacher, in secondary school,” he said, when we force him to rewind to the beginning.
That led to a spell teaching in Kenya before he returned to the UK. It was then that a career change beckoned.
He went to the University of Birmingham.
A scroll through case law of significance will find various mentions of Willans’ newest partner, but before we can dwell on this Pathé is racing onwards.
“From there it was Cardiff,” he said.
That was initially to do his bar finals at the city’s university, but he also joined Race Equality First as an outreach officer in 2003 before becoming head of legal services and, in 2007, acting director.
Race Equality First represents victims directly affected by hate crimes and/or discrimination; it delivers anti-racism training to companies of all sizes and seeks to hold governments and organisations to account.
By now he was already well on his way to understanding that it was not just the law that fascinated him, but people and how the law can help them.
“Fairness is very important to me. Inclusivity, diversity and equality – I think they are very important too.”
Which is where we touch briefly on the shockwaves that reached these shores from America when President Trump suggested there needed to be some rolling back from the efforts to embed a more diverse and inclusive culture into the American workplace.
“The Equality Act 2010 has been around quite a long time in terms of the workplace in this country, which demands that people have to be treated with dignity.
“I think British businesses, for the majority, realise the wins they get from a more diverse workplace and the direction of travel here is too strong.
“Companies here are generally intent on doing good and treating people well and doing the right thing. It’s embedded. I can’t see that changing.”
From race equality, Pathé moved, via Thompsons Solicitors, to Berry Smith LLP, a Cardiff-headquartered firm where he focused entirely on employment law for businesses, before moving back across the Severn Bridge to Bristol and law firm DAS.And then, 12 years later, to GS Verde Group, a mergers and acquisitions focused business where Pathé provided employment related corporate support, specialising in TUPE.
Why the move to DAS?
“I also knew people at the company. Again, it is all about relationships,” he said, the work following him across the bridge too.
And why Willans? DAS employed 600 plus, the firm that took it over in 2024, ARAG Law, now employs more than, which suggests the work would have never dried up.
The clues are in everything we’ve said above.
The higher up you go in many of the bigger law firms the less chance you have of being close to the coalface, to building those relationships, getting to know the people personally, and any satisfaction that comes with that to those that thrive on such things. Pathé, it seems, does just that.
“When I found Willans it just felt right straight away. It was the right place at the right time. They were looking for someone with my experienceand I was looking for a change.
“I knew as soon as I walked through the door that this is where I wanted to be. The culture felt right.
“The experience and skills, in the (employment law) department and the firm, are exceptional.
“We do events. We have direct contact with clients. There is a very collegiate culture. It is very positive and I really like that.”
That very morning members of , solicitor Klará Grmelová, senior associate solicitor Hifsa O’Kelly and Pathé, had been delivering some learning for clients on the Employment Rights Bill.
The final version of the bill has yet to be enacted by Parliament, but a “major shake-up of workers’ rights” is certain, which is enough to get businesses reaching out already.
The British Chambers of Commerce used an evidence session on the Bill to MPs to highlight “businesses’ serious concerns about the legislation and the speed and detail of consultation”.
“The Government’s own assessment suggests that the legislation will cost businesses almost £5bn per year, with SMEs impacted the most,” said the chamber.
“These costs follow a harsh budget for business, where increases in employers’ national insurance contributions and the national living wage are set to pile a further cost of over £20bn on firms.”
Pathé puts it like this: “The Employment Rights Bill is currently subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and wider consultation.
“When it becomes law, it will make a lot of changes to employment rights which create additional obligations for employers in terms, amongst other things, of employer National Minimum Wage, Statutory Sick Pay, paternity leave, parental leave, bereavement leave, the day one right not to be unfairly dismissed, flexible working, and zero hours contracts.
“We don’t yet know where the final Employment Rights Act will land but the effect will be significant, and employers will need to make sure have everything in place for when the new rights are enacted into law.”
He added: “When the bill is enacted, we will be providing guidance for employers on what it means for them and what they need to do to ensure compliance.”
Pathé also talks enthusiastically about how all three senior members of the employment team - partners Matthew Clayton, Jenny Hawrot and himself - had managed to meet over coffee out of the office, clearly enjoying the energy from such interactions you suspect might have been missing at times elsewhere.
Although not unfamiliar with Gloucestershire already, he is equally enthusiastic about what he’s seen so far.
“Cheltenham is a very elegant looking town. There is a growth in tech-based businesses, particularly here in Cheltenham, which is very exciting.
“Gloucestershire is pretty diverse in terms of its businesses, but here in Cheltenham there are a lot of tech businesses.
“They are usually quite fast-moving firms. There can be a lot of money involved, and things can change quite suddenly. We are ideally placed to help them deal with their issues,” said Pathé.
When we ask what his interests are outside of the law he says they once included amateur dramatics and choral singing, before work took over, admitting they have now become what he calls “the usual things”.
By which he means “music, travel, rugby”, with reading, wine, baking and a determined effort to keep gardening on that list.
He’s still commuting from his home near Bristol to Cheltenham, and it will be interesting to see if that changes. He bought the house for the garden, to encourage that passion.
But, it is what the move into Gloucestershire allows him to deliver for clients that currently has all his focus. He clearly enjoys and sees the strength in a firm with such approachable partners, and is massively impressed with the expertise Willans has across the board.
“Because of the nature of businesses, they can be dealing with a lot of issues and what they want is solutions.
“"They need the right solutions – and that’s what we deliver. There is no point complicating things. We just give them the answers they need, which is what they ultimately want.
“Those relationships we have with people we work with, they are enjoyable and hugely important to us. Clients know they can ring me at any time and they will get through.”