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 upheld a costs order against a person who had opposed an application to join him to proceedings (Costar UK Ltd v Low and others).
- The Technology and Construction Court (TCC) has held that the filing of a costs budget one day late was “trivial” and not a breach that should attract sanction under CPR 3.14 (Wain v Gloucestershire County Council and others).
- The Civil Justice Council has set up an advisory group for online dispute resolution.
Commercial:
- The Construction Leadership Council’s construction supply chain payment charter is now available online.
Education and social services:
- The Education (School Teacher’s Prescribed Qualifications, etc) (Amendment) Order 2014 has been made.
- The Education (Wales) Measure 2011 (Commencement No 3) Order 2014 has been made.
- The DfE has published statutory guidance on supporting pupils at school with medical conditions.
- The County Court has:
- given guidance on extension to the 26-week time limit in care proceedings (Re S (A Child));
- granted an adoption order to a grandfather despite opposition to this from the child’s parents (Re A (Adoption versus Special Guardianship order)); and
- adjourned care proceedings on the ground that a local authority’s failure to use an appropriately-qualified sign language interpreter during a social work assessment with profoundly deaf parents could have resulted in a breach of their rights under Article 6 of the ECHR (Re R).
- The President from the Family Division has published his eleventh View from the President’s Chambers.
Employment and pensions:
- Employment practitioners should be aware that the deadline for TUPE employee liability information notification will increase to 28 days from 1 May 2014.
- The EAT has held that transferring employees could not claim against a transferee for providing misleading information pre-transfer (Allen and others v Morrisons Facilities Services Ltd).
- A consultation has been published on technical changes to the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme.
Environment:
- The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (Amendment) Order 2014 came into force on 1 April 2014.
- The Domestic Renewable Heath Incentive Scheme Regulations 2014 have been published.
- The Environmental Impact Assessment Directive 2014 has been published in the Official Journal.
- The government has announced measures to minimise the environmental impacts of shale gas and provided guidance on environmental risk assessments.
- WRAP has issued a waste regulations route map and the Welsh Government has published a consultation on draft statutory guidance on the duty to collect the four main recyclable materials.
FOI and data protection:
- BIS has launched a consultation on data sharing for non-economic regulators.
Health:
- The DH has published a consultation on the criminal offence of supplying or publishing false or misleading information.
Local government:
- The High Court has found that words attributed to the leader of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council were not defamatory of the claimant children’s care homes because they amounted to a statement of opinion rather than a statement of fact (Meadows Care Ltd and another v Lambert and another).
Property and planning:
- The TCC has held that:
- a deed entered into by the relevant parties to address issues arising from the building owner’s development governed the parties dispute not the dispute resolution provisions under the Party Wall Act 1996 (Dillard v F & C Commercial Property Holdings Ltd); and
- an employer was entitled to terminate a contractor’s engagement on the Gibraltar airport tunnel engineering project that was substantially delayed (Obrascon Huarte Lain SA v Her Majesty’s Attorney General for Gibraltar).
- The Land Registry has revised Practice Guide 29 and Practice Guides 67 and 75.
State aid:
- A second opinion of the Committee of the Regions on EU guidelines on state aid for rescuing and restructuring firms in difficulty has been published in the Official Journal.