REUTERS | Toby Melville
16/12/2015

“Living wage” provisions in public procurement contracts

  • by John Bennett
  • Co-author of the looseleaf encyclopedia, EU Public Procurement Law and Practice

The law on whether or not it is permissible to impose “living wage” rather than “minimum wage” provisions on contractors performing public contracts has long been an area of controversy (see Practice note, PCR 2006: Sustainable procurement; Workforce matters).

The Chancellor announced in his 2015 Budget Speech that there would be new measures to improve compliance with the national minimum wage and, that there would be a new  “national living wage” from April 2016, which essentially proposes increasing the statutory minimum wage. Nevertheless, this has not taken the heat out of the debate, particularly for contracts in London and the South East where living costs are significantly higher. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Tobias Schwarz
09/12/2015

Public procurement case digest (November 2015)

November’s case digest includes an ECJ ruling considering the scope of Article 26 of Directive 2004/18 in relation to contracting authorities requiring tenderers to provide declarations that they will pay staff a minimum hourly wage, and an Advocate General’s opinion on restrictions on the use of sub-contracting in public procurements.

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 | Vasily Fedosenko
09/12/2015

“Voluntarily adopted”: looking at ordinary residence and mental capacity

This post considers the decision in Milton Keynes v Scottish Ministers [2015] CSOH 156, a case that examined how the interpretation of “ordinary residence” set out in R v Barnet LBC ex parte Shah [1982] UKHL 1 should be applied in situations where an individual lacks mental capacity to decide where they should live.  Continue reading →

REUTERS | Neil Hall
02/12/2015

Planning Court considers what is a material consideration in decision-making

The decision of the Planning Court (part of the Administrative Court) in Villages Action Group and another v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and others [2015] EWHC 2729 (Admin) reiterates some key public law concepts relating to decision-making, such as what is a material consideration and the duty to give reasons. Although there has been an increasing trend in common law for decision-makers to give reasons for their decisions, the present legal position is that there is no general duty on public bodies to give reasons for their actions or decisions. In Villages Action Group, a case concerning a challenge to the refusal of an application for planning permission for residential development on land, the Planning Court refused to infer that the decision-maker (a planning inspector) had failed to take into account a material consideration simply because this had not been addressed in her decision letter.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Jim Young
25/11/2015

Public procurement policy review: September to November 2015

This post sets out the key developments in public procurement legislation and policy that lawyers need to be aware of and covers the period from September to November 2015. The post does not consider case law as this is covered in our monthly public case digest. For a summary of the latest cases, see Public procurement case digest (October 2015).

Subscribers to Practical Law can keep up to date with the latest public procurement developments by signing up to the Practical Law Public Law or Practical Law Local Government email updates (available weekly) or the Practical Law Competition updates (available daily). Updates are also tweeted on the @PracLawProcure Twitter feed. Continue reading →