In this month’s digest another automatic suspension is lifted, the courts consider the best value requirements when taking a service in-house and the Advocate General has again been considering the in-house exception.
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
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.
Ros Ashcroft, Associate at DAC Beachcroft LLP:
A recent news story again reported the government’s view that local authorities should aim to cease being direct service providers, instead commissioning services from a wide range of specialist providers. It was suggested that this is the route to more effective and efficient public services in a time of austerity. In-house provision, therefore, is generally presented as not representing best value (whether this is in fact the case or not).
Many people will have spotted that this ‘news’ is not really new. The vision of local authorities as hubs at the heart of a network of service contracts with providers in the public, private and third sectors was clearly set out in the Open Public Services White Paper back in 2011 and has run through most discussions about local government commissioning and outsourcing since then.
But from a lawyer’s perspective it is interesting to see this aspiration re-stated again now. There have always been a number of reasons why the contractor hub vision is much less simple than it might seem. How does it look when viewed through the filter of recent legal developments for local authorities?
Ros Ashcroft, Associate at DAC Beachcroft LLP, considers the role of the local authority as a contracting hub and the challenges it will have to overcome to effectively source public services. Continue reading
Practical Law Public Sector addresses the questions that schools may ask local authorities regarding day-to-day school management and sets out the legal issues to consider when responding:
This FAQ examines what a local education authority can do in a case of persistent unauthorised absence or poor behaviour at school. For all our school hotline queries, please see Practice note, Schools hotline FAQs. Continue reading
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.
This is the fifth 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 since November 2013.
Please feel free to submit a comment below or contact us at feedback@practicallaw.com if you have any views on the cases, issues, or legal development that is 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:
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. Continue reading
In our e-mail last week, we covered the January 2014 report in the public interest published by the Wales Audit Office (WAO) into the indemnity for a libel counterclaim that Carmarthenshire County Council provided to its chief executive (see Legal update, Welsh Audit Office rules council indemnity and pension pay supplement for chief executive unlawful). That report, which was issued under section 22 of the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004 (2004 Act), noted that the Executive Board of the council had acted unlawfully in agreeing that it would indemnify its chief executive for the bringing of a libel counterclaim against an individual blogger who had sued the council and its chief executive for libel. Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
Practical Law Public Sector addresses the questions that schools may ask local authorities regarding day-to-day school management and sets out the legal issues to consider when responding:
This FAQ examines the role of schools in deciding whether parents can be prosecuted for their child’s poor attendance or behaviour. For all our school hotline queries, please see Practice note, Schools hotline FAQs.