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 High Court has:
  • rejected an application by an unsuccessful claimant that the conduct of a defendant entitled it to an order for costs against the defendant (R (Royal Free London NHS Trust) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Brent Borough Council); and
  • refused to grant relief from sanctions for a claimant’s failure to comply with procedural requirements, which resulted in the loss of its success fee (Long v Value Properties and another).

Education and social services:

• The Supreme Court has held that a child’s state of mind is relevant to determining habitual residence (In the matter of LC (Children) (No 2)).
• The Court of Appeal has clarified the procedure that should be used in the Court of Protection when directly appealing a refusal to grant permission to appeal a previous decision (TA v AA and Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council).
• The High Court has:
  • dismissed a challenge by a primary school to a local authority’s intervention powers under section 60 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (R (Uplands Junior School) v Leicester City Council and another);
  • given guidance on giving effect to arbitral awards (S v S);
  • provided good practice guidance on care cases involving foreign nationals (Re E (A Child)); and
  • held that a wife’s refusal to see her spouse survived despite her loss of capacity (RGB v Cwm Taf Health Board and others).
• Guidance has been published on:
  • teacher misconduct; and
  • the publication of judgments in the family courts and the Court of Protection.
• The Department for Education has published:
  • a summary of responses to its consultation reviewing trade union facility time in schools; and
  • data showing how quickly local authorities place children in need of adoption with a family.

 Employment and pensions:

• The draft National Minimum Wage (Variation of Financial Penalty) Regulations 2014 have been published.
• The High Court has held that non-solicitation and non-dealing restrictive covenants in the employment contract of a recruitment consultant were enforceable despite recruitment information being on social media (East England Schools CIC (trading as 4myschools) v Palmer and another).
• The Court of Session has held that the expiry of fixed-term contracts does not trigger a collective redundancy consultation (University College Union v University of Sterling).
• BIS has published revised guidance on TUPE.
• The President of Employment Tribunals in Scotland has issued guidance on postponements under the Employment Tribunal Rules 2013.
• It has been reported that Birmingham landmarks could be sold to settle equal pay claims made against Birmingham City Council.

Environment:

• The Environment Agency has published:
  • a CRC guidance manual for Phase 2;
  • updated guidance on civil sanctions and enforcement; and
  • a consultation on enforcement and sanctions guidance for CRC, EU ETS and climate change agreements.
• The government has announced that:
  • it will introduce regulations to reduce the number of environmental impact assessments; and
  • all local authorities in England will be able to keep 100% of business rates that they collect from shale gas sites.

FOI and data protection:

• The First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) has outlined the test that should be used to ascertain whether particular information is held by a designated body under FOIA (UCAS v Information Commissioner and another).
• The ICO has held that the Financial Conduct Authority had breached FOIA by failing to understand the scope of a complainant’s request.

Health:

• The Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Commencement No 7 and Transitory Provision) Order 2014 has been published.
• Monitor has announced that it will be investigating the proposed merger of pathology services in Sussex.

Housing:

• The Court of Appeal has held that an applicant seeking housing assistance under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 was intentionally homeless as she had refused assistance from her previous private sector landlord to deal with rent arrears incurred by her co-tenant (Viackiene v London Borough of Tower Hamlets).

Local government:

• The High Court has held that a company’s annual liability for non-domestic property rates could be classed as a contingent debt where the company went into a CVA part-way through a rateable year (Kaye v South Oxfordshire District Council and another).

Property and planning:

• The Land Registry has published consultations on its powers under the Land Registration Act 2002 and taking over local land charges.

Public procurement:

• The European Parliament has:
  • adopted two new public procurement directives to replace the existing Utilities and Public Sector Directives; and
  • voted to support a proposal for the regulation of external public procurement.
• The government has updated the PFI/PPP code of conduct to include information for local contracting bodies on operational savings.