NATIONAL law firm Clarke Willmott LLP has won a prestigious award from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) for its outstanding work supporting members in the South West.

The firm, which provides legal advice to NFU members in Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, has received the organisation’s Tim Sell Legal Panel Excellence Award.

Esther Woolford, partner at Clarke Willmott in Taunton and head of the firm’s agriculture sector team, was presented with the award recently.

The accolade follows the firm’s recent success in helping NFU members to obtain hundreds of thousands of pounds in settlement payments following a group legal claim against firms accused of mis-selling finance.

The 17 claimants, who were supported by the NFU’s Legal Assistance Scheme, brought a class action against Nationwide Corporate Finance Ltd (‘NCF’) and its sister company, Bluerock Secured Finance Limited, formerly known as Alfandari Private Equities Ltd (‘Bluerock’) claiming to be victims of misrepresentation, negligence and breaches of consumer credit law.

NCF – which has no association with Nationwide Building Society – has previously been accused by the Sunday Times of rushing people into “high-pressure loans” that placed their homes at risk, leaving some feeling “suicidal”.

As a member of the NFU’s Legal Panel, Clarke Willmott was instructed to bring proceedings against NCF and Bluerock for damages and cancellation of the transactions. It argued that these transactions were worse than any legitimate finance on the market, and indeed worse in many ways than simply selling their equipment outright, and the farmers would never have agreed to them if they had known the full terms.

The proceedings are believed to be one of the largest group claims in history relating to financial mis-selling in the agricultural sector. The case was issued in 2019 in the High Court in Bristol. After pandemic-related delays, a case management hearing took place in February 2022 before His Honour Judge Jonathan Russen KC.

The legal team at Clarke Willmott comprised Laura Mackain-Bremner and Lara Williamson, supported by Counsel Ted Loveday of Maitland Chambers.

Clarke Willmott is a national law firm with offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Southampton, and Taunton.

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