PLC Public Sector reports:
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Civil litigation: litigation lawyers will be interested in the factors that the Court of Appeal took into account when imposing a condition in relation to the costs of an appeal. (In this case, the appellant was allowed to continue on the basis that they did not seek their costs.)
Employment: employment lawyers should note that the EAT has confirmed that two employees who were unfairly dismissed following a TUPE transfer had not failed to mitigate their losses by refusing the transferee’s offer to engage them as self-employed contractors. The EAT considered that to penalise an employee in these circumstances would undermine the protection offered by TUPE 2006.
Environment: environment lawyers should be aware that the government has published guidance on the legal definition of waste and its application.
Freedom of information: information lawyers and officers will be interested in:
- The Upper Tribunal’s decision that information relating to a company’s commercial management of land that it owned should be disclosed in a redacted form.
- The First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights)’s decision that information regarding environmental training seminars organised by the BBC were not “environmental information” for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and fell within the “journalism, art or literature” derogation of FOIA and therefore did not have to be disclosed
Housing: housing lawyers are likely to find the following developments of interest:
- The High Court’s decision in JL v Secretary of State for Defence. The High Court dismissed the claimant’s judicial review application holding that the Ministry of Defence enforcing the possession order was proportionate and was not a breach of the claimant’s Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. This decision effectively expands the Pinnock ruling to allow proportionality reviews to be raised at the eviction as well as the possession stage of proceedings.
- New regulations, which reduce the amount of information that applicants need to provide when applying to renew an HMO licence under the Housing Act 2004, come into force on 10 September 2012. These are likely to also be of interest to licensing authorities.
Local government: members and officers should be aware that new regulations on meetings and access to information have been issued for local authorities in England operating executive arrangements and will come into force on 10 September 2012.
Special educational needs: education lawyers specialising in SEN will be interested to see that the Upper Tribunal has ordered the First-tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) to re-consider the appeal of a mother who wanted her son’s statement of special educational needs to name an oversubscribed Academy. The Upper Tribunal held that the First-tier Tribunal was wrong to strike out her appeal on the basis that its decision would not be binding on the Academy under the terms of its funding agreement with the Secretary of State. However, the facts of this case were unique to the school which, unlike Academies created under the Academies Act 2010, did not have a funding agreement specifically dealing with the admission of pupils with SEN.
Consultations: this week consultations were published on: