Make sure that you have not missed a key development in your area of the law by reading our latest In brief review of the Practical Law Public Sector e-mail for the week ending 28 August 2013.
Replacing our recommended actions, In brief will include a one sentence summary of all of the legal developments reported in our weekly e-mail to make sure that no matter how busy our subscribers are, they can still keep in touch with all the latest developments.
Charities and mutuals:
- The TUC and Co-operatives UK have agreed a joint set of best practice guidelines which are intended to ensure that public service mutuals are based on employee support.
Civil litigation:
- The High Court has provided guidance on the approach to be taken on an application for access to a court file in insolvency proceedings under rule 7.31A of the Insolvency Rules 1986 (Times Newspapers Ltd v McNamara).
Education and children’s services:
- The Education (Penalty Notices) (Wales) Regulations 2013 have been made by Welsh Ministers and will come into force on 2 September 2013.
- The Welsh Government has published a consultation on draft revised guidance regarding arrangements for safeguarding children.
Environment:
- Defra has published a consultation on amendments to the definition of a portable battery in the non-statutory guidance notes on the Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009.
EU:
- Under Council Regulation (EU) 216/2013, as of 1 July 2013, only the electronic version of the Official Journal has legal effect.
- The European Commission adopted the annual Union Work Programme for European standardisation on 31 July 2013.
- Notices from member states on accessing Visa Information System data for consultation have been published in the Official Journal.
- The European Commission has announced that it will invest EUR13.7 million in cross-border digital public services through the Electronic Simple European Networked Services (e-SENS) project.
FOI and data protection:
- The ICO has announced that it has updated its model publication schemes, sector-specific definition documents and guidance, to reflect the datasets provisions of the Protection from Freedoms Act 2012 that are coming into force on 1 September 2013. It has also announced the publication of some new sector-specific definition documents.
Health:
- The OFT has published a decision, finding that the award of contracts to SSP Health Limited to manage and operate 22 General Medical Practices in Merseyside does not give rise to a relevant merger situation under the Enterprise Act 2002.
Local government:
- The DCLG has published a consultation on proposals to introduce a national council tax discount for annexes.
Pensions:
- The Deputy Pensions Ombudsman has ruled that if an applicant for ill-health early retirement is a member of the LGPS in respect of two different, current employments, each employing authority must make an independent decision about the member’s eligibility, including obtaining separate certifications from different independent registered medical practitioners (Dolan (PO-248)).
Property and planning:
- The High Court has held that local planning authorities may require improvements that go beyond strict maintenance in notices served under section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (Berg v Salford City Council).
- The Outer House of the Scottish Court of Session has confirmed that the liquidators of a Scottish coal company had the power to disclaim disused coal mining sites that were subject to statutory licences, as the cost of complying with the statutory obligations under the licences was likely to exhaust the funds that would otherwise be available for distribution to creditors (Nimmo and another, Re Directions).
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Payments) Regulations 2013 have been published for scrutiny and they do not apply to residential lettings.
Regulation and enforcement:
- Directive 2013/40/EU on attacks against information systems has been published in the Official Journal.
- BIS has published the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Payments) Regulations 2013 for scrutiny, which implement all remaining parts of the Consumer Rights Directive.