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 Local Government email.

Adult social services:

• The Judicial Office has announced that the Court of Protection case management pilot that was originally due to start in June 2016 has been postponed until September 2016.

Children’s services:

• The High Court has criticised a council for stopping the sending of a judgment transcript to a mother in an adoption case and the Court of Appeal, due to its general objection to publishing the judgment and the lack of redaction (Re X (A Child).

Civil litigation:

• The High Court has upheld an order made by a Chief Master, in which he had refused to set aside his earlier order granting an extension of time for serving a claim form, notwithstanding that the extension would deprive the defendant of a limitation defence in relation to part of the claim (The Khan Partnership LLP v Infinity Distribution Ltd).
• Lord Neuberger has given a speech entitled Ethics and advocacy in the twenty-first century at the Lord Slynn Memorial Lecture 2016, in which he warned that contingency fee arrangements and the introduction of alternative business structures increase the potential for conflicts of interest.
• A number of court forms are being amended from 27 June 2016, in connection with the introduction of a new online fee remission service.

Education:

• The Local Government Ombudsman has published a report on a complaint about admissions arrangements for a voluntary aided primary school. Places at the school were allocated on the basis of religion with priority given to applicants who can demonstrate commitment to the Sikh faith.

Employment and pensions:

• The Supreme Court has upheld an employment tribunal order for reinstatement of an employee to the role in which she had been employed on restricted duties prior to her dismissal (McBride v Scottish Police Authority).
• The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that the Police had not acted unlawfully under the Human Rights Act 1998 in disclosing in an enhanced criminal records certificate the fact that an individual had been tried and acquitted of rape (R (R) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police and another).
• HM Courts and Tribunal Service has announced plans to introduce a new online database of employment tribunal decisions in Autumn 2016.
• The ECtHR has rejected an appeal by an individual that he had been discriminated against on the grounds of sexual orientation contrary to Article 14 and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The individual had been denied a survivor’s pension following the death of his partner in 2002, with whom he had lived in a de facto marital relationship for twelve years (Aldeguer Tomás v Spain).

Environment:

• The High Court has held that a magistrates’ court had been wrong to accept that playing loud music to drown out other noise was a reasonable excuse for not complying with a noise abatement notice issued under section 80 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (Waltham Forest LBC v Mitoo).

FOI and data protection:

• The Investigatory Powers Bill 2016-17 has reached the House of Lords stage. A new version of the bill has been published.
• The Advocate General has delivered an opinion which finds that a dynamic IP address is, for a web page provider, personal data to the extent that a third party internet access provider has additional data which, linked to the IP address, facilitates identification of web page users (Breyer v Bundesrepublik Deutschland (AG’s Opinion)).

Local government:

• The Advocate General has given an opinion that the lending right in Article 1 of the Rental and Lending Directive includes the making available to the public of electronic books by libraries for a limited period of time (Vereniging Openbare Bibliotheken v Stichting Leenrecht (AG’s Opinion)).

Property and planning:

• The High Court has held that it was unlawful for a local planning authority to take into account a local community donation when granting planning permission for a wind turbine (R (Wright) v Forest of Dean District Council and another).
• The House of Commons Library has published a briefing paper explaining the government’s approach to beneficial ownership in both the UK and abroad, in respect of companies and land.

Public procurement:

• The Advocate General has handed down an opinion on a preliminary reference from an Italian court regarding the application of Directive 2004/18 to national legislation on betting and gambling, which allows undertakings to be excluded from the tendering procedure if they fail to provide bank references from two separate banks in order to prove economic and financial standing (Domenico Politano (AG’s Opinion)).
• The CMA has published an open letter to procurement professionals with guidance on detecting and deterring bid rigging.