Mediation is the attempt to help parties in a disagreement to hear one another, to minimise the harm that can come from disagreement (e.g. hostility or ‘demonising’ of the other parties) to maximize any area of agreement, and to find a way of preventing the areas of disagreement from interfering with the process of seeking a compromise or mutually agreed outcome.

The process is managed by a mediator who will seek to establish the issues and needs of the parties, with the aim of negotiating a settlement which both parties can accept, without the need of progressing to more adversarial and expensive means of settling a dispute.

Mediation settlements can often be more flexible than simply an award of money, which means in a number of circumstances it can be better than litigation or arbitration as it can help to maintain a commercial relation going forward.

With Accreditation, subject to both parties agreement, we would be happy to organise and run a mediation to see if agreement can be reached before the parties embark on more costly dispute resolution procedures.