On the 26 March 2020, the Health Secretary made and brought into force The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, which on their face impose quite extraordinary restrictions on freedom of movement backed by increased powers of arrest and prosecution.
Please note: the information contained in our legal updates is correct as of the original date of publication.
On the 26 March 2020, the Health Secretary made and brought into force The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, which on their face impose quite extraordinary restrictions on freedom of movement backed by increased powers of arrest and prosecution.
Whilst the Regulations make it illegal for,
This note is to consider the position of the local authority in this brave new world (or at least for the next six months after which the regulations expire) and considers the recent Guidance issued by the Office for Product Safety and Standards dated 27 March 2020, which all local authorities should have received, and the power provided to them to enforce the requirements relating to businesses.
It is hoped that the relationships which already exist between relevant local authority officers and the businesses they regulate will make the process of enforcement more straightforward, hence the assumption that local authorities will allocate responsibility for enforcing the requirements regarding business closures and restrictions to their environmental health and trading standards officers.
There are for local authorities four potential offences to consider under the Regulations;
These offences are punishable on summary conviction by a fine (level not specified but likely to be unlimited) or there is the option of a fixed penalty notice of £60 (£30 if paid within 14 days and it is the recipients first fixed penalty notice) or £120 if it is a second Notice, £240 for the third, £480 for the fourth, £960 for the fifth and £960 thereafter. Guidance on the issue of these Notices will be provided soon.
As is recognised by the Office for Product Safety and Standards Guidance document, “'The current crisis has significant implications for organisations and businesses across the UK”, and it is, therefore, inherently important that local authorities take a proportionate approach with these new powers, and the Guidance identifies what they need to do, namely,
Local authorities are well used to accepting additional responsibilities and being in the frontline for enforcement responsibilities, so the issues raised above will not be insurmountable. However, it will be the issues which run in parallel with the new enforcement powers which may create concerns, for example, how do we protect the officers who are not only going into premises where they may be within 2 metres of others, but are also potentially closing a business which due to the current economic climate may not reopen?
Law firm Browne Jacobson has collaborated with Wiltshire Council and Christ Church Business School on the launch event of The Council Company Best Practice and Innovation Network, a platform which brings together academic experts and senior local authority leaders, allowing them to share best practice in relation to council companies.
In the Autumn Statement delivered on 17 November, rises to the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage rates were announced, to take effect from 1 April 2023.
Announced in September but scrapped on 17 November the investment zone proposals were very short lived. The proposal has now morphed into the proposal for a smaller number of clustered zones earmarked for investment.
Settlement agreements are commonplace in an employment context and are ordinarily used to provide the parties to the agreement with certainty following the conclusion of an employment relationship.
On 2 November 2022, the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the much awaiting case of Hillside Parks Ltd v Snowdonia National Park Authority [2022] UKSC 30. The Court’s judgment suggests that the long established practice of using drop-in applications is in fact much more restricted than previously thought. This judgment therefore has significant implications for both the developers and local planning authorities.
In ‘failure to remove’ claims, the claimant alleges abuse in the family home and asserts that the local authority should have known about the abuse and/or that they should have removed the claimant from the family home and into care earlier.
Logistics company Eddie Stobart has been fined £133,000, after a series of failures which took place whilst excavation work was carried out, exposing its staff to asbestos.
This article is the second in a series to help firms take a practical approach to complying with the ‘cross-cutting rules’ within the new ‘Consumer Duty’ (CD) framework. The article summarises what it seems the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seeking to achieve from the applicable rules (section 2 below) and potential complications arising from legal considerations (section 3).
Across the UK, homelessness is an urgent crisis, and one that is set to grow amid the rising cost of living. Local authorities are at the forefront of responding to this crisis, but with a lack of properties that are suitable for social housing across the UK, vulnerable individuals and families are often housed in temporary accommodation.
Two directors of a construction company were fined after failing to ensure the safe removal of asbestos from a plot of land. On 14 and 15 November 2021, Directors Anthony Sumner and Neil Brown, of Waterbarn Limited were involved in the uncontrolled removal of asbestos material from a plot of land in Grasscroft, Oldham.
An engineering company in Tyne and Wear was fined £20,000 after a worker fractured his pelvis and suffered internal injuries after falling through a petrol station forecourt canopy, whilst he was replacing the guttering.
The Digital Services Act (the “DSA”) has today (27 October) been given the go-ahead by the EU Council and will enter into force by early 2024.
NHS England has issued an updated (publication 11 October 2022) suite of Complex Change guidance about how it will assure and support proposals for complex change that are reportable to it. New and (where it is still in force) existing Complex Change guidance are as follows.
Updates include UK Shared Prosperity Fund, contracts, Subsidy Control Bill, data controller liability, Government Covid-19 procurement and Highway Code revisions.
The complex and rather nebulous transitional subsidy control regime set out in the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement and the UK’s wider international commitments has made it difficult for public authorities and those working with them to proceed with certainty where subsidies are involved.
Investment zones have been introduced by the Conservative party to get the United Kingdom (UK) ‘working, building and growing’. They are to be designated sites which provide time-limited tax incentives, streamlined planning rules and wider support for local growth to encourage investment and accelerate the development of housing and infrastructure that the UK needs to drive economic growth. Processes and requirements that slow down development will be stripped back with the intention of attracting new investment.
