Police: Apprentice arrested but not action ultimately taken
An apprentice solicitor and a paralegal have been sanctioned for pulling sickies to hide an arrest and an employment tribunal hearing respectively.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has made them subject to orders under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974, meaning they cannot work for law firms in future without the regulator’s permission.
Owen Goodhand was an apprentice solicitor at Kent firm Martin Tolhurst Partnership. He emailed its HR manager and his supervisor to say he had missed a day of work the previous week because he had been ill, when in fact he had been arrested following a police investigation and later released on bail.
A few weeks later, Mr Goodhand responded ‘no’ when asked by his supervisor if he was aware of any personal conduct issues that could constitute a breach of the SRA code of conduct, including “being arrested, charged or convicted on any criminal matter”. A few days later, he admitted what had happened.
Five months on, in September 2025, Kent Police confirmed that the investigation into Mr Goodhand was closed with no further action.
The SRA said the section 43 order was necessary “because of the serious nature of his conduct which was dishonest”.
Meanwhile, Manjeet Puar was a locum paralegal at Ealing Legal Services, the in-house department of the London Borough of Ealing
The SRA said she called in sick on two days in February 2022 when she was actually at an employment tribunal hearing.
“When given the opportunity to clarify whether she had attended the tribunal, Ms Puar misled her manager by stating that two pro-bono representatives had attended in her place, knowing this to be untrue,” the SRA said.
Her dishonesty was also the reason for the section 43 order.
Separately, the SRA also an order under section 99 of the Legal Services Act 2007 disqualifying Roberta Tovey, also known as Bobbie Palmer, for her actions while working as a paralegal in the Bristol office of Thompsons.
The different provisions applied because Thompsons is an alternative business structure.
In July 2025, Ms Tovey intercepted post from South Gloucestershire Council to the firm’s payroll department about an attachment of earnings order relating to her personal debt.
The SRA said that, over the following weeks, she told one colleague that the debt matter had been resolved and was a council mistake, and another that the council had the wrong person. Neither statement was true.
She then forwarded an edited email to the firm which appeared to be recent correspondence from the council, when she knew it was not.