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 Civil Procedure (Amendment No 6) Rules 2014 have been made, making a number of changes to the 74th and 75th CPR Practice Directions.
• The Civil Proceedings Fees (Amendment No 3) Order 2014 has been made and come into force.

Education and children’s services:

• Guidance has been given on drafting public law orders where jurisdiction is at issue (Re F (A Child)).
• The Court of Protection has:
  • held that it can preserve an incapacitated person’s anonymity following death (Press Association v Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust); and
  • revoked a lasting power of attorney on the basis that the attorney had exercised undue pressure on the donor to make the lasting power of attorney (London Borough of Redbridge v G and others).
• The Charity Commission has updated its safeguarding guidance for charity trustees.
• The DfE has published a final version of a special educational needs and disability code of practice.

Employment and pensions:

• The Supreme Court has held that an illegal worker did have a right to bring a discrimination claim against their UK employer (Hounga v Allen (nee Aboyade-Cole)).
• The Court of Appeal has held that a tribunal acted correctly when allowing a lay representative to withdraw their husband’s claim (Drysdale v Department of Transport (The Maritime and Coastguard Agency)).
• The EAT has held that:
  • an employer failed in its duty to make reasonable adjustments when it did not adjust redundancy criteria which placed an employee at a disadvantage (Dominique v Toll Global Forwarding Ltd); and
  • workers on call do not necessarily need to be at their place of work to be “working” (Truslove and another v Scottish Ambulance Service).
• The government has:
  • published a consultation on the provision of annual reports on whistleblowing; and
  • published a statement stating that its review into the law governing industrial disputes has been scaled back.
• The Public Service (Civil Servants and Others) Pensions Regulations 2014 have been made.

Environment:

• The government has:
  • laid the draft Fuel Poverty (England) Regulations 2014; and
  • published river basin planning guidance and the response to its consultation on the draft version of the guidance.

FOI and data protection:

• The Court of Appeal has:
  • held  that an information requester is entitled to request the software format that the information is provided in, unless it is not reasonably practical to do so (Innes v Information Commissioner and another); and
  • rejected a challenge to a closed FOIA hearing (Browning v Information Commissioner and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).
• The House of Lords has published a report on the “right to be forgotten”.
• The ICO has published a report on big data and data protection.

Health:

• Monitor has published guidance on merger benefits and transactions.

Housing:

• The Court of Appeal has:
  • held that possession defence cases relying on the Equality Act 2010 should be assessed using the “seriously arguable” criteria required by Article 8 of the ECHR (Aster Communities Ltd v Akerman-Livingstone); and
  • confirmed that decisions concerning vulnerability under the homelessness regime are for a local housing authorities not the courts to take (Kanu v London Borough of Southwark).
• The County Court has refused an appeal against an earlier decision allowing a counterclaim for set off to be made eleven years after judgment for possession was entered (Midland Heart v Idawah).

Local government:

• The Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 have been made.
• The Local Audit (Delegation of Functions) and Statutory Audit (Delegation of Functions) Order 2014 has been made.
• The High Court has:
  • held that a local authority did not have the power to introduce a residence requirement into its council tax reduction scheme (R (Winder and others) v The Equality and Human Rights Commission); and
  • ruled that providing improved facilities on land did not mean that land had been incorrectly appropriated by a local authority (R (Maries) v London Borough of Merton).

Property and planning:

• The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 2014 have been made.
• The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (Wales) (Amendment) Order 2014 and the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Non-Material Changes) (Wales) Regulations 2014 have been made.
• The government has published a consultation on further reforms to the planning system.