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.

Civil litigation:

• The County Court Remedies Regulations 2014, which concern the County Court’s powers with regards to search orders and freezing injunctions, are coming into force on 22 April 2014.
• The Civil Procedure Rule Committee has circulated a note clarifying the transitional provisions relating to the new costs management rules in CPR 3.12(1).
• New rules on the County Court’s insolvency jurisdiction (the Insolvency (Commencement of Proceedings) and Insolvency Rules 1986 (Amendment) Rules 2014 and the London Insolvency District (County Court at Central London) Order 2014) are coming into force on 22 April 2014.
• The High Court has considered the application of the costs management regime to Part 8 claims (Kershaw v Roberts and another).
• The High Court has:
  • struck out a claim for failure to comply with an unless order, and refused an application for relief from sanction (Medical Supplies and Services International Ltd v Acies Engineering Ltd and another);
  • considered an appeal from a decision not to grant relief from sanction for failure to file a costs budget in time (Utilise TDS Ltd v Davies and others); and
  • refused an application for permission to use documents said to be subject to public interest immunity and legal professional privilege, which had been mistakenly disclosed (Tchenguiz and another v Director of the Serious Fraud Office).

Education and social services:

• The DfE has published a consultation on revisions it proposes to make to the SEN and Disability Code of Practice: 0-25 years.
• The Family Procedure (Amendment No 3) Rules 2014, which are made as a consequence of certain sections of the Children and Families Act 2014, come into force on 22 April 2014.
• In the High Court: 
  • care proceedings were withdrawn and a child was made a ward of court, in order to enable the court to retain a welfare oversight in the case for a short period following the making of a special guardianship order (Surrey County Council v AB and others); and
  • it was held that an order imposing reporting restrictions to protect the identity of a young person could not extend to reports of the proceedings after the subject of the order has reached the age of majority at 18 (JC and RT v The Central Criminal Court).
• In deciding what was in the best interests of a mentally incapacitated individual who had been exposed to press coverage as the result of the influence of a carer, the Court of Protection held that an individual’s right to freedom of expression must be weighed against a right to privacy (London Borough of Redbridge v G and others).

Employment and pensions:

• The European Court of Human Rights has held that the ban on secondary industrial action (or “sympathy strikes”) in UK law does not breach the right to freedom of association in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (RMT v United Kingdom).
• The High Court has granted an order for the imaging and inspection of computers belonging to a party’s former employees (Warm Zones v Thurley and another).
• An independent review has been launched to consider the law on industrial action in response to alleged union intimidation.
• A meeting at the East London employment tribunal user group has raised some interesting points for employment practitioners.
• The DWP has published two guides for employers on what they will need to do if they receive a Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA) notice.

Environment:

• The Energy Efficiency (Building Renovation and Reporting) Regulations 2014 were made on 8 April 2014 and largely come into force in the UK on 30 April 2014.
• The ECJ has decided that the competent authorities of member states must propose the declassification of a site of community importance (SCI) to the Commission, where those authorities have received a request from the owner of land in the SCI, alleging its environmental degradation (Cascina Tre Pini Ss v Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e le Mare and others).
• Defra has published:
  • a report on the work done under Phase 1 of its Smarter Environmental Regulation Review; and
  • a strategic reform plan, which sets out its plans for regulatory reform as part of the Red Tape Challenge.
• The Environment Agency website has migrated to gov.uk from March 2014.
• The government has launched an alpha version of the DefraLex site, which will be a portal for environmental legislation.

FOI and data protection:

• The ECJ has ruled that the Data Retention Directive is invalid because the EU legislature exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality (Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and others).
• The Article 29 Working Party has published a working document on draft ad hoc contractual clauses for personal data transfers from an EU data processor to a non-EU sub-processor.

Housing:

• The High Court has held, obiter, that a section 21 notice was effective when it was served prior to the tenant’s deposit being protected (R (Tummond) v Reading County Court and another).

Local government:

• The High Court has quashed a council’s decision to revoke a licence to operate a soup kitchen, on the basis that the decision was unlawful as it had been taken without due regard to the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010 (Blake and others v London Borough of Waltham Forest).

Property and planning:

• The DfT has announced details of the compensation arrangements for Phase 1 of the high speed rail link HS2.
• The Land Registry has launched online access to its Commercial & Corporate Ownership Data, which comprises over 3.2 million ownership records for property in England and Wales.

Public procurement:

• The Council of the European Union has formally adopted a directive on electronic invoicing in public procurement.
• The General Court has dismissed an appeal by unsuccessful tenderers seeking to challenge public procurement decisions by the:
  • Office for Official Publications of the European Commission (Evropaïki Dynamiki — Proigmena Systimata Tilepikoinonion Pliroforikis kai Tilematikis AE v European Commission); and
  • European Parliament (Cit Blaton SA (CITEB) and Belgo-Metal v European Parliament).
• An Advocate General has given his opinion on a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Italian Council of State on the interpretation of derogations from the ineffectiveness remedy (Italian Interior Ministry v Fastweb SpA).

Regulation and enforcement:

• The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (Commencement No 2, Transitional and Transitory Provisions) Order 2014 has been made and brings into force from 13 May 2014 certain parts of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.