Andrea Chute (Door Tenant)

Andrea Chute’s practice includes employment disputes, professional regulatory cases and hearings before disciplinary panels and tribunals. Many of Andrea’s more recent cases relate to the educational and healthcare sector.

She has wide ranging experience in advising clients (both corporate and individual) in all aspects of employment law. She also has considerable experience in providing lectures and seminars on employment law topics for professional organisations including the Bar Council and the TUC. Andrea is also a visiting lecturer in Employment Law at the University of Westminster.

Andrea has developed an enviable reputation for conducting detailed internal investigations. Notable work in this area includes;

Whistleblowing Investigation for NHS 111 Service (2020)

• Andrea was instructed to investigate substantial whistleblowing allegations for a long-established social enterprise in the healthcare sector which runs services for two large integrated urgent care providers.
• The instructing entity was contracted to provide “in hour” GP and dental primary care treatment services, and so was responsible for the security of controlled drugs. It was also contracted to run call centres providing the NHS 111 service and the “out of hours” service for urgent primary care calls.
• The investigation covered diverse complaints about all aspects of the above service. This meant getting up to speed on the minute detail of how different aspects of the business operated, as well as in relation to external regulations. Andrea interviewed, over 30 witnesses and received and marshalled documents from them to produce her independent report of over 300 pages. The above investigation was conducted online due to the COVID pandemic and took 3 months full time work.

Grievance Investigation for NHS trust (2021)

• An NHS Trust instructed Andrea to investigate one of its departments having received over 80 competing grievance allegations from three consultants including complaints made from and about the Head of the Department.
• The investigation took 7 months full time work. It covered diverse complaints about the running of the entire department, including an allegation of failure to competently remodel the department’s service. The investigation also covered the competency or otherwise of the three consultants and failure to follow internal policies.
• To produce her report Andrea needed to understand how the department’s entire service operated and how it integrated with the hospital and the community. Andrea interviewed 16 witnesses and received and marshalled documents from them to produce two independent reports of over 800 pages. All the above was done online due to the COVID pandemic.