Practical Law

Make sure that you have not missed a key development in your area of the law by reading our In brief review of the latest Practical Law Public Sector e-mail.

Central government:

• The government has announced that more borrowing and taxation powers will be devolved to the Welsh Government.
• The Cabinet Office has published new guidance on the principles that government departments and other public bodies should adopt when consulting on policy and legislation.

Civil litigation:

• The Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2013 (which sets out the conditions under which the prohibition on filming and broadcasting from the court will be lifted) came into force on 30 October 2013.
• The High Court has:
  • held that HMRC was justified in providing certain details about the claimants to journalists in an “off the record” discussion with the journalists about tax avoidance (The Queen on the application of (1) Ingenious Media Holdings plc and (2) Patrick McKenna v HMRC); and
  • ruled on whether an order for specific disclosure should be made before permission had been granted and where permission had already been refused on paper (Sky Blue Sports & Leisure Ltd and others v Coventry City Council and others).
• During a initial case management conference in the TCC, Akenhead J suggested that the parties’ solicitors give serious consideration to substantially reducing their costs budgets before he dealt with costs management at a subsequent hearing (Finesse Group Ltd v Bryson Products (A Firm)).
• The TCC will adopt a protocol and guidelines on e-disclosure from 1 January 2014.

Commercial:

• The TCC has held that a funder had only a limited liability to a building contractor where the employer had defaulted on its payment obligations under the building contract (Squibb Group Ltd v London Pleasure Gardens Ltd and another).

Education and children’s services:

• The Court of Appeal has discharged a placement order to allow the child time to undergo therapy (F (a child)).
• The High Court has terminated a father’s parental responsibility where he had been imprisoned for physical violence towards the child’s mother and had taken no interest in the child (A v D (Parental Responsibility)).
• The Upper Tribunal has held that the First-tier Tribunal had erred in how it calculated the cost of the provision of a school place for a child with special educational needs by dividing the overall school budget by the number of places available (FS (Re T) v London Borough of Bromley).
• The Upper Tribunal has heard an appeal against a First-tier Tribunal (tribunal) decision that a Statement of Special Educational Needs should name more than one school (TB v Essex County Council).
• President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, has given his seventh View from the President’s Chambers, the latest in a series of reports on the process of reforming the family courts.

Employment and pensions:

• The EAT has upheld a tribunal’s decision that, an employee who prevented a definitive diagnosis of his alleged condition was not disabled (Cox v Essex County Fire and Rescue Service).
• The Deputy Pensions Ombudsman has given her determination in a complaint against NHS Pensions (Tuttle (86135/1)).

Environment:

• The government has published interim guidance on the UK’s implementation of the recast WEEE Directive 2012.
• Public Health England has published a draft of its Review of the Potential public health impacts of exposures to chemical and radioactive pollutants as a result of shale gas extraction.
• The Prime Minister announced that the UK government is undertaking a review of green levies on energy companies.

Housing:

• The DCLG has published a consultation on the details of its proposals to reform the limits on social housing rents and to ensure that these limits do not apply to high earners.

Human rights:

• The Court of Appeal has ruled that the cap on welfare benefits introduced by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 was compatible with the claimants rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (R (JS) v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions).
• The First-tier Tribunal has considered its jurisdiction to determine questions of public law, human rights and EU law in the context of VAT online filing (L H Bishop Electrical Co Ltd A F Sheldon t/a Aztec Distributors v HMRC).

Information and data protection:

• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Covert Human Intelligence Sources: Relevant Sources) Order 2013 has been laid before Parliament, changing the categories of people who are able to authorise the use of undercover covert human intelligence sources under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
• The Upper Tribunal has upheld the decision of the First-tier Tribunal that Cabinet minutes about the take-over of Rowntree Mackintosh by the Nestlé group of companies in 1988 should be disclosed (Cabinet Office v The Information Commissioner and Gavin Aitchison).
• The First-tier Tribunal has ruled that legal professional privilege extended to an engagement letter issued by a law firm to its client (denying HMRC access to its contents), but only to the extent that it discussed the advice to be given (Behague v HMRC).
• The Information Commissioner and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, covering working together.
• The adoption of the draft Data Protection Regulation proposed by the European Commission in January 2012 is likely to be delayed until early 2015 following the adoption of conclusions by the European Council.

Property and planning:

• The Mobile Homes (Wales) Act 2013 received Royal Assent on 4 November 2013.
• The Court of Appeal has held that the assessment of damages for trespass should be based on the sum that would have been paid for a hypothetical licence for the period in respect of which the trespass actually occurred (Eaton Mansions (Westminster) Ltd v Stinger Compania de Inversion SA).
• The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) has ruled that an improvement notice under the Housing Act 2004 must be formally revoked or quashed on an appeal (Simon v Denbighshire County Council).
• Defra is consulting on the:
  • Rural Development Programme in England for 2015, which is linked to the Common Agricultural Policy; and
  • implementation of reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy in England for 2015 to 2020.

Public procurement and state aid:

• The Cabinet Office has published a suite of documents for public sector bodies that are buying their cloud computing commodity and support services through CloudStore.
• The DfT has published best practice guidance on tendering for road passenger transport contracts.
• Monitor has published a statement of issues in its investigation into the commissioning of cancer surgery services in Greater Manchester and Cheshire by NHS England.
• The European Commission has published draft revised guidelines on state aid for rescuing and restructuring non-financial undertakings in difficulty.