This month includes local government re-organisation, social care, Litigants in Person, state aid and the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill.
Welcome to our Public Matters Newsletter.
This month we have:
This guide provides information and guidance for local authorities considering a move to a unitary form of local government in their area.
Emma Marshall provides some tips to bear in mind when dealing with Litigants in Person and a reminder of a number of pieces of guidance, to assist in-house teams in dealing with Litigants in Person in disputes or court/tribunal proceedings.
State aid decisions and judgments on district heating projects are few and far between, so any guidance from the Commission on these projects is invaluable. Karl Edwards looks at the reacquisition of the Hamburg District Heating Network, which provides useful insight in to ensuring that investment in to a district heating scheme by a public body is compliant with state aid principles, specifically the market economy operator principle.
Generally the Joint Committee's report welcomes the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, but it does set out some areas of concern as well as making recommendations, which Emma Grant views.
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.
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.
Claims arising from interest-only mortgages have been farmed in volume. Many such claims to date have sought to drive a narrative that interest-only mortgages are an inherently toxic product and brokers were negligent simply for suggesting them. Taylor is a helpful recalibration, focussing instead on what the monies raised by the mortgage product were being used for and whether the client understood the inherent risks.
