Employment and settlement agreement solicitors in Chester

Chester is an English city whose two nearest employment venues are in Wales, at Mold and Wrexham — and its residents earn well over the statutory weekly cap while its local jobs pay under it.

Where a Chester claim is heard

The Chester numbers

An English city with Welsh venues

Chester has no employment venue of its own, and the two the HMCTS court finder returns first are across the border. Mold Justice Centre, at the Law Courts in Mold, is about ten miles away; Wrexham Magistrates’ Court is a fraction of a mile further. The first English venue on the list is the Liverpool Civil and Family Court at nearly sixteen. Liverpool.

That border makes no difference to your rights. Employment tribunals in England and Wales sit as one system and apply the same statute, the Employment Rights Act 1996, so a Chester claim heard in Mold is decided on exactly the law it would be in Liverpool. What changes is practical: HMCTS publishes the Mold opening hours in English and Welsh, and lists a second postal address in Wrexham.

Mold is a County Court and a Crown Court, listed for ten areas of law with employment among them. It has a café, a hearing loop, a children’s room and wireless access; parking is not mentioned. Where a Chester case is actually listed will be on the notice of hearing.

This page shows no regional caseload figure. Chester is in the North West on ONS geography, but its nearest venues are in Wales, and HMCTS no longer publishes which venue belongs to which administrative region. Picking either region would be a guess, so we leave it out rather than print a number that may describe the wrong queue.

Chester residents earn far more than Chester jobs pay

The figures on this page are for Cheshire West and Chester, the unitary authority ONS publishes. The median full-time job located there pays £730 a week, under the statutory weekly cap of £751. The median full-time resident earns £798, well over it.

That gap, about £69 a week in the residents’ favour, is one of the widest on this site in that direction. It fits an area many of whose better-paid residents work elsewhere, though the figures do not say where. Warrington, nearby, runs the other way: its jobs pay £807, more than its residents earn.

For a Chester resident, the right figure is the pay of the job you are leaving. If that job was in Chester itself, the statute will likely use your week in full; if it was a better-paid job elsewhere, the cap may already be trimming it.

Stockport, on the other side of Manchester, shows the same split: jobs under the cap, residents over it. The Stockport page. In both places the median resident is the one the cap catches, and in both the typical local job escapes it.

Two Chester medians through the statute

For a 45-year-old with ten complete years, statutory redundancy on the job median is £8,756, worked on the full week. On the resident median it is £9,012, because the week is cut back to the cap before the formula starts. The resident figure is about £824 higher in real pay, but only £256 higher in statutory redundancy.

Notice pay is uncapped. Ten weeks’ statutory notice under section 86 is about £7,297 on the job median and £7,984 on the resident median, taxed as earnings either way. For a well-paid Chester resident the difference has to be made up in notice and any ex gratia sum, not in the statutory column. How notice pay is treated.

The £30,000 tax threshold covers about nine and a half months of Chester job-median pay, and less of a resident’s, so the higher your pay the sooner a package crosses it. How the threshold works.

Employment law is the same on both sides of the border; only the venue is in Wales. Liverpool · the time limit.

Common questions about Chester