Oct 19, 2021
A magistrates’ court hearing of a 76-year-old man’s challenge to a council tax liability order was procedurally unfair, the High Court has found.
Oct 18, 2021
The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care team has stood by its initial view that councils carry out unnecessary child protection investigations, although it has admitted that comments from Ofsted questioning that stance had given it “pause for thought”.
Oct 18, 2021
The legal team at Loughborough University and the Department of Health and Social Care Legal Advisors in the Government Legal Department were both highly commended in the In-house Team of the Year category in the Law Society Awards 2021.
Oct 18, 2021
The Court of Appeal has refused Hillingdon Council permission to appeal in a dispute about the arrangements for the routeing of lorries to and from HS2 construction sites in the borough.
Oct 18, 2021
LLG has decided to extend the term of its current president, Quentin Baker, until spring 2022, when it is envisaged that the full range of presidential team activities will be available to his successor.
Oct 18, 2021
One of the leading registered providers of social housing in the UK has named five law firms to a legal services framework worth an estimated £10m.
Oct 18, 2021
National law firm Weightmans has welcomed its first cohort of apprentice solicitors to its Apprenticeship Academy, which allows school leavers to qualify as a solicitor and gain a law degree while working.
Oct 18, 2021
Browne Jacobson’s government and infrastructure team has advised Manchester City Council on the set up of the Civic Quarter Heat Network (CQHN), a sustainable energy project which aims to provide the City of Manchester with an efficient and environmentally friendly heat and power network to power…
Oct 15, 2021
Merton Council has successfully prosecuted a landlord and his associated property agency for letting unsafe properties and operating in an unlicensed manner.
Oct 15, 2021
A council's decision to reject plans for a 167-home development to be built on Green Belt land has been overturned by a planning inspector.
Oct 15, 2021
Urgent action is needed at four community councils in Wales to address unlawful expenditure and inadequate governance arrangements, the Auditor General for Wales has said in a series of reports in the public interest.
Oct 14, 2021
A workers' union has filed a claim alleging that a facial recognition algorithm used by Uber is leading to the termination of darker-skinned workers at a disproportionate rate.
Oct 14, 2021
The external auditors to Thanet Council have urged the local authority in a report issued under Section 24 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and identifying "key deficiencies" in governance processes to bring in an independent monitoring officer to carry out a risk assessment of the…
Oct 14, 2021
Camden Council has become the latest authority to announce that it is looking to issue climate bonds as a way of financing a range of environmental projects across the borough.
Oct 14, 2021
The Housing Ombudsman has launched a consultation on the service’s Corporate Plan for 2022-25, which it says will reinforce the changing role and importance of complaint handling.
Oct 14, 2021
A plan to implement 20mph speed limits throughout Cornwall should not rely on police enforcement, the region's Police Crime Commissioner has said.
Oct 14, 2021
A consortium of Scottish councils, a major social housing provider and other organisations have appointed 12 law firms to a £2m legal services framework.
Oct 14, 2021
Planning and public law barrister Kate Olley, formerly of Landmark Chambers, is joining Francis Taylor Building as a tenant with immediate effect.
Oct 13, 2021
A decision which moved full council meetings at North Northamptonshire Council from 7pm to 2pm has been criticised as “anti-democratic” by detractors.
Oct 13, 2021
The Local Government Ombudsman has highlighted the length that prospective tenants have to wait for applications to be processed after upholding a complaint against Birmingham City Council over a six-month delay to one family’s request.
Oct 12, 2021
The London Borough of Croydon will have a directly elected mayor after a residents’ referendum found heavily in favour of changing its governance arrangements.
Oct 12, 2021
The government has confirmed that social landlords will be exempt from the Residential Property Developer Tax (RPDT) when it is introduced next year.
Oct 12, 2021
A council’s ten year strategy to transform education in its county could be disrupted after parents whose children’s schools are under threat of closure as part of the plan are threatening legal action.
Oct 11, 2021
The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust has launched a legal challenge to the Secretary of State's decision to grant planning permission for a Holocaust Memorial and learning centre in a park bordering the Palace of Westminster.
Oct 11, 2021
A local campaigner must pay more than £45,000 in costs after losing a judicial review application over the construction of a new medical facility, the BBC has reported.
Oct 11, 2021
Shelter Cymru has told a Senedd Cymru hearing that police have been assisting in unlawful evictions.
Oct 11, 2021
Supreme Court justices have struck down two laws passed by the Scottish Parliament after referrals were made by the Attorney General and the Advocate General for Scotland about their validity under devolution legislation.
Oct 11, 2021
Measures to improve student safety have been implemented at a school criticised by a coroner over the death of a pupil.
Oct 07, 2021
Pembrokeshire County Council’s leader exceeded his authority when he approved a £95,000 pay-off to the council’s former chief executive, a report by the authority's deputy monitoring officer has found.
Oct 07, 2021
Calderdale Metropolitan District Council accumulated a backlog of 200 unresolved complaints about noise during the pandemic, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.
Oct 07, 2021
Cumbria County Council's judicial review bid of the secretary of state's decision to reorganise local government in the county has been delayed following a call-in from the local authority's scrutiny committee.
Oct 07, 2021
A Housing Ombudsman investigation into a housing association's failure to respond to a resident's request to deal with damp and mould in her home has uncovered two instances of severe maladministration.
Oct 07, 2021
Scarborough Borough Council is to take legal action in an £800,000 dispute over a local water park.
Oct 07, 2021
A three-way row has erupted between Norfolk Constabulary, the Broads Authority and a council leader over a planning decision affecting a river bank site.
Oct 07, 2021
Westminster City Council wrongly declared an asylum seeker intentionally homeless after she left a flat in Middlesbrough because of the activities of an intruder.
Oct 07, 2021
A community interest company’s case against a social landlord was “hopelessly muddled” and must be struck out, a judge has said.
Oct 07, 2021
Mr Justice Fraser has ordered a search of former Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock’s personal emails and social media apps.
Oct 07, 2021
Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council committed “egregious” failings in a child care case so bad that “a public judgment is appropriate to attempt to ensure that repetition of those failings is avoided”, HHJ Sharpe has said.
Oct 06, 2021
Four councils have been found by the High Court to have engaged in an abuse of process relating to injunctions against travellers and a fifth has been severely criticised in cases where they showed “complacency, even insouciance”.
Oct 06, 2021
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has made three statutory appointments to the board of a provider of social housing in Liverpool that was the subject of a strongly-critical regulatory notice.
Oct 06, 2021
A QC who specialises in child protection cases has joined 1 Crown Office Row in Brighton.
Oct 05, 2021
The Government is to introduce a new offence of interfering with the operation of key infrastructure – including motorways, railways, and airports – where the impact will affect the distribution of essential goods, such as fuel and medicine.
Oct 05, 2021
The Government has published new regulations and guidance setting out the level of support councils are required to provide to domestic abuse victims who need to escape home.
Oct 05, 2021
Browne Jacobson has appointed Charlotte Antoniou as a partner and the new head of its London education team.
Oct 05, 2021
Law firm Gowling WLG has advised the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and its regeneration and development company Be First on an agreement with Hackman Capital Partners (HCP) to build London's largest film and TV production centre in Dagenham.
Oct 05, 2021
The Government will overhaul the Human Rights Act in this Parliament, the Justice Secretary has said.
Oct 05, 2021
A team from law firm Bevan Brittan's London and Leeds offices has advised Worthing Borough Council on the £7m acquisition of a major town centre site.
Oct 04, 2021
People living in areas without a major city are particularly badly hit by “vanishing” availability of civil legal aid across housing, welfare, education, community care and immigration, the Law Society has claimed.
Oct 04, 2021
The LGiU thinktank has set out six principles that it believes should underpin the Government’s forthcoming Levelling Up White Paper.
Oct 04, 2021
A leading disability discrimination law firm, Fry Law, has gone into administration.
Oct 04, 2021
Jackie Weaver and a panel of comedians are to celebrate a year since the infamous Handforth Parish Council meeting went viral by forming “the ultimate council meeting” for a special live comedy event.
Oct 04, 2021
Anthony Collins Solicitors (ACS) has appointed Andrew Dudley, the head of housing at Wright Hassall, as a new partner to its social housing property team.
Oct 04, 2021
Liverpool City Council has appointed Daniel Fenwick, Director of Legal and Governance at the London Boroughs of Newham and Havering for the last six years, as its City Solicitor.
Oct 01, 2021
Devolution in England must extend not only to combined authorities but to local government as a whole, and to rural as well as urban areas, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has said.
Oct 01, 2021
The percentage of care or supervision cases to be disposed of within 26 weeks has reached its lowest level since 2012, government data has revealed.
Sep 30, 2021
The Housing Ombudsman has found severe maladministration in relation to a South East housing association’s complaint handling, after a resident waited seven years for repairs.
Sep 30, 2021
The Welsh Government expects discussions with the UK Government about the future of justice in Wales to begin shortly, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution Mick Antoniw MS has said.
Sep 30, 2021
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, has appointed 40 Deputy High Court Judges, for a single fixed six-year term.
Sep 30, 2021
A judge has expressed concern about Ofsted’s intention to prosecute a non-registered children’s home in which a child deprived of liberty appears to be making progress.
Sep 30, 2021
Wales has issued the UK’s toughest planning guidance on development in flood zones, which will effectively bar new homes in these areas unless strong defences are provided.
Sep 30, 2021
A town councillor is trying to raise funds to take legal action over the proposed closure of an ambulance station in Evesham.
Sep 29, 2021
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has said a gulf exists between what the public expects from adult social care and what it delivers, and the service is “progressively failing to deliver for those who need it most”.
Sep 29, 2021
Legal professionals are at high risk of burnout, mental ill-health and workplace bullying, harassment or discrimination, legal mental health charity LawCare has said.
Sep 29, 2021
A fifth new High Court judge – real property law specialist Edwin Johnson QC – has been appointed this month.
Sep 29, 2021
Cafcass last month extended the use of its prioritisation protocol for managing high workloads to the Greater Manchester area, it has emerged.
Sep 29, 2021
A High Court judge who last week refused to exercise the inherent jurisdiction to authorise the continued deprivation of the liberty of a 12-year-old child (LT) in an acute psychiatric admission unit for adolescents, has since authorised her deprivation of liberty in an empty children’s home found…
Sep 28, 2021
Law firm Bevan Brittan has bolstered its Construction Team with the appointment of two partners and two senior associates.
Sep 28, 2021
The parents of a 15-year-old pupil with special educational needs and disabilities have instructed lawyers to challenge the lawfulness of government guidance to schools on Covid-19 testing, arguing that it should be urgently revised to enable pupils with disabilities to take less intrusive saliva…
Sep 28, 2021
A High Court judge has declined to find that it was in the best interests of a 12-year-old girl (LT), who does not have a psychiatric condition requiring hospitalisation, to be deprived of her liberty on an acute psychiatric admission unit.
Sep 28, 2021
The Leader of Blackpool Council has accused the Home Office of acting “in a way that smacks of a deliberate move to frustrate the justice system”, after asylum seekers were placed in a local hotel ahead of a court hearing of the authority’s application for an injunction.
Sep 27, 2021
Helen Tucker, a partner in Anthony Collins Solicitors’ housing management team, has been appointed as a part-time deputy district judge (DDJ) for the Midlands Circuit.
Sep 27, 2021
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an independent fostering agency over whether it is lawful for it only to accept heterosexual evangelical Christians as potential carers.
Sep 27, 2021
Given the speed and scale with which the Government needed to create new regulations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in future it needs to have the requisite tools in advance "to respond in a swift and proportionate manner that does not risk criminalising behaviour in ways incompatible with…
Sep 27, 2021
Barristers’ chambers Francis Taylor Building and law firm Poppleston Allen have published a 50-page report covering the COVID-19 related legislative changes which affected the hospitality sector, from the start of restrictions to Step 4 of the Roadmap and the full re-opening of hospitality in July…
Sep 24, 2021
A High Court judge has rejected an application by the London Borough of Hackney for a final injunction prohibiting a number of defendants until 13 September 2022 from engaging in various activities which were said to constitute anti-social behaviour and/or public nuisance in any public space in the…
Sep 24, 2021
The Cabinet Office has “not been enforcing the code for public appointments” in relation to arm’s length bodies (ALBs), the Public Accounts Committee has warned.
Sep 24, 2021
The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames has agreed to pay more than £10,000 to a looked after child after an investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) found the quality of care he received impacted his education and relationship with his family.
Sep 23, 2021
Lessons learnt from emergency initiatives aimed at reducing rough sleeping during the pandemic need to be embedded in long-term policy, a group of cross-party politicians and experts from the health, housing, and homelessness sectors have told the Government.
Sep 23, 2021
A Deputy High Court judge has granted Ashford Borough Council a final anti-harassment injunction against a large-scale landlord who engaged in a campaign of “repetitive, frequent, oppressive and offensive correspondence”.
Sep 23, 2021
The Court of Appeal has warned against orders in childcare proceedings extending the time for making an application for permission to appeal by reference to the receipt of a transcript rather than by reference to a specific date.
Sep 23, 2021
Maldon District Council has warned a councillor who said he wanted to wear its censure letter to him as a hat.
Sep 23, 2021
Thanet District Council’s leader has taken the rare step of asking the Government to intervene to resolve its governance problems.
Sep 23, 2021
A First-Tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) case was not conducted unfairly despite an appellant and a witness having difficulty in hearing the online proceedings, the Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber has decided.
Sep 23, 2021
The Ministry of Justice has established an expert working group to seek ways to improve standards, reliability and security in electronic signatures and other means of legally executing documents.
Sep 22, 2021
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has accepted that he must redetermine the Stonehenge road tunnel project after his High Court defeat last month.
Sep 22, 2021
A personal injury and clinical negligence specialist has been appointed a High Court Judge, the fourth new justice to be unveiled this month.
Sep 22, 2021
The Court of Appeal has given the go-ahead for a judicial review of West Sussex County Council's decision to remove a cycle lane installed during the pandemic.
Sep 21, 2021
The Welsh Government has launched a new programme to simplify planning and historic environment law, as part of a long-term plan to create Codes of Welsh law.
Sep 21, 2021
A council has failed in an appeal over a judge’s decision that a personal injury claimant had not been fundamentally dishonest in relation to his claim.
Sep 21, 2021
A property owner in London who built a number of extensions and converted them into seven flats and two bedsits, all without planning permission, has been ordered to pay more than £144,000.
