REUTERS | Dani Cardona
05/10/2016

Public procurement case digest (August – September 2016)

August and September’s case digest includes four ECJ decisions, including a ruling that betting and gaming concessions fall outside the scope of Directive 2004/18, and a High Court judgment that strongly criticises a tender process conducted by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Please feel free to submit a comment below or send us an Ask query if you have any views on the cases covered, or think that we have missed a case that should be brought to the attention of public procurement practitioners. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Darren Staples
04/10/2016

Meeting of the Lawyers in Local Government London Adult Social Care and Health Group

On 16 September 2016, Thomson Reuters was very pleased to host a meeting of the Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) London Adult Social Care and Health Group. The group provides a focus of professional knowledge and expertise aimed at contributing to the development of law and best practice in adult social care and health. The group also assists with developing training and networking opportunities for local authority lawyers specialising in this area of law.

The meeting was jointly chaired by Stephanie Broomfield, a principal lawyer at the London Borough of Islington and Pamela Clarke, a lawyer at the South London Legal Partnership (a legal service provided by the London Boroughs of Merton, Kingston upon Thames, Richmond upon Thames and Sutton).

Thomson Reuters is an LLG corporate partner. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Bob Strong
28/09/2016

Latest government figures on freedom of information requests published

The Cabinet Office has recently released its latest quarterly statistics on information requests that 41 central government bodies have received under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). The report makes interesting reading covering as it does the:

  • Initial handling of FOI requests.
  • Number of requests that have been received during the quarter from April to June 2016.
  • Timeliness of issuing a substantive response.
  • Rates of disclosure of requested information.
  • Exemptions that are applied when withholding information.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Mathieu Belanger
21/09/2016

Understanding the differences between judicial review and general litigation

The High Court in Watt v London Borough of Hackney and another [2016] EWHC 1978 has examined, in the context of a planning case, the circumstances in which a mistake of fact could constitute a ground for judicial review. The judgment also raises some interesting other issues; firstly, the failure by the solicitor instructed on behalf of the claimant to take on board the court’s advice that the matter was not one where an “ordinary” litigation approach was appropriate and, secondly, the costs consequences that flowed from the court’s decision. Although the claimant succeeded in her application that the planning permission granted by the council should be quashed, the court held that she was not entitled to her costs until 27 April 2016, the date of the hearing at which her case was recast as a mistake of fact. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Dylan Martinez
13/09/2016

Local government quarterly digest (May – August 2016)

This is the latest in our series of quarterly local government update blogs, which will enable readers to catch up on the most important cases, issues or developments in local government from February to April 2016.

Please feel free to submit a comment below or send us an Ask query if you have any views on the cases, issues, or legal developments covered or if you think we have missed something that should be brought to the attention of local government practitioners.

In this post we look at:

  • Cases of interest to local authorities.
  • Other developments of interest to local authority lawyers.

Continue reading →