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Chartered Institute of Arbitrators In September 2005, the Branch committee of the South Eastern Branch of the Institute approved a proposal that a Mediator's Group for the Branch should be set up, to take steps to encourage the Mediation Aspect of Dispute Resolution within the Branch Area. Accordingly, on the 17th October of that year Derek Ross initiated a meeting of interested mediators within the Branch which was held on the 14th October 2005. This was attended by the writer, who accepted the invitation to become its Chairman, Martin Moorhead, Clem Danin, Tony Hardwick and Derek Ross. There was a general discussion held about how the Group should develop and what its objectives should be. It was agreed that the primary focus should be for the promoting of the use of Mediation within the Branch Area. The meeting agreed to invite certain other branch members to join them. The next meeting was held in Maidstone at the offices of Rod O'Driscoll on the 14th November 2005 and was attended by Clem Danin, Tony Hardwicke, Derek Ross, Martin Moorhead, John Boultwood and John McCabe. At this meeting it was agreed that, once off the ground, the group would be responsible for preparing a draft mediation clause for use in contracts, the use of which would be encouraged and circulated through News and Views. It was to be hoped that members of the Branch would all participate in the spreading of the advantages of mediation. We also agreed that our main objective would be to promote mediation generally as the best method of dispute resolution and liaise with other organisations of similar minds. On the 13th March 2006 David Simmonds of the Branch, who had recently become an accredited mediator through the Institute of experts, joined us. At the meeting held then, there was an exchange of views of each others mediation experiences and it was agreed that the group would now concentrate on presentations as the best method of spreading the word. The members agreed to cut their teeth on a presentation to the Branch and this was fixed for, and held, on the 13th June 2006. At our next meeting on the 24th April, the details for the presentation were worked out and the papers were prepared. The demonstration was given on the 13th June and received a good reception. The feed back from those attending the presentation, and the subsequent discussions of our group members, were especially useful in spotting where the difficulties in such a presentation lay and how they should be remedied. The whole of our next meeting on the 27th June dealt with this aspect. By this time, David Simmonds had been able to arrange and organise for the group to give a Mediation Demonstration to the Electrical Contractors Association at their Annual General meeting in Eastbourne to be held on the 2nd September. For this purpose a few of our group attended the head office of the Association in London and met Ken Tracey, the secretary of the Association and himself a mediator, to talk through the contents of the presentation with us. For the Eastbourne presentation, we agreed upon a short opening supported by a Power-Point presentation followed by a Mediation Demonstration. The paper work for this was kindly prepared by David and the presentation and demonstration (for which we were only allotted 2 hours) duly took place. The feedback was good and Ken felt that it had gone down well. One of the most successful aspects was that, with Ken's support, we were able to get one of the Association members, who was quite new to mediation, to act the part of the defending electrical contractor. This, and Tony Hardwicke's performance as the nursing home owner, was a great success. Ken acted as the mediator and managed the meeting with considerable tact and experience. However, shame to say, and probably through my default, that has been the Zenith of the group's activities to date. What we have all found is that with all of us working our butts off in our own businesses, there has been considerable difficulty in meeting together. We did subsequently meet on the 28th September but thereafter with Christmas looming and holidays abounding we found that there was insufficient of us to meet on the next agreed date of the 28th November. Attempts were made to meet in February of 2007 and we did finally meet on the 15th February 2007. At this meeting it was reported that, disappointingly, neither all Clem's work with the local Chambers of Commerce, nor David's work with the BFPSA had so far produced any opportunities for a further presentation. Court appointments for mediation were discussed as was some further liaison with the Head office of the Institute. It was agreed generally that the Group members would continue to pursue possible outlets and a further meeting fixed for the 20th March but unfortunately due to members other commitments we had to cancel this meeting as well. However, in the meantime, contact was made by Derek Ross with Greg Hunt of the Head office of the Institute and a meeting held. There is now a good, and hopeful, ongoing communication with Head Office who have themselves recently become interested in promoting this side of ADR. The Group are being strongly represented now in such Head Office activities and David has given some great assistance to the Head Office over their new web site. The above is just an outline of the Group's work to date. We believe very firmly that the future of dispute resolution will be routed in Mediation alongside Arbitration and Adjudication. The experience of our members confirms the now well held perception that at least 80% of mediations are successful, and they save such a huge amount of costs and time that there must be very few cases where it should not be the first port of call. Any suggestions or contributions from members who are interested would be most welcome and if there are any accredited mediators out there who would like to join us then please contact the writer or Tony Hardwick at 01233 623618 or enq@invictamediation.co.uk Roderick O'Driscoll |
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