PLC Public Sector reports:
Make sure that you have not missed a key development in your area of the law by reviewing our latest list of recommended actions.
This weeks actions are:
Academies Act 2010: the Department for Education continues to publish guidance on the Academies Act 2010 and has now published land transfer guidance which will be useful for advisers to schools applying to become an Academy under the Act.
Pensions: the decision of the High Court in Daventry District Council v Daventry & District Housing Limited, holding that Daventry District Council is still liable to fund a £2.4 million pension deficit despite it calling for the outsourcing contract concerned to be rewritten, is a useful reminder for contract lawyers involved in negotiating and finalising agreements that the final agreement should properly reflect the terms that the parties have negotiated. It is common practice for local authorities to retain liability of any pensions deficit on transfer, as it is often more cost-effective for them to amortise it across the contributions they continue to make for their remaining employees. However, for smaller councils, where the outsourcing involves a large proportion of their staff, such costs may be so significant that the business case for outsourcing is significantly weakened. Our blog on the lessons that local authorities can learn from this case may also be of interest.
Staff costs: officers advising on reducing head count may find the framework published by the National Audit Office on managing staff costs in the current economic climate helpful.
ICO decisions: information officers should be aware that, although the ICO recognised the importance of confidentiality in contractual documents, it ordered the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to disclose the first three digits of the council’s pre-paid waste sack clients postcodes because of the high public interest in local authority decisions.
Health bodies: following the recent decision of the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, that the former Cardiff Local Health Board and Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust were guilty of maladministration in the way that they had dealt with a patient suffering from Huntingdon’s disease, health bodies should ensure that staff are reminded of the importance in carrying out full assessments of patients’ needs and provide access to training where necessary.
Consultations: this week there have been a number of consultations and calls for evidence published:
- The Ministry of Justice has published a call for evidence on the European Commission’s Green Paper on European contract law.
- The Government Equalities Office is consulting on the public sector equality duties.
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) are consulting on guidance setting out how the equality and human rights duties interact with the CQC’s essential standards of quality and safety.
- The Commission for Rural Communities has issued a call for evidence on local enterprise partnerships.
- The Law Commission is has published a consultation on criminal liability in regulatory contexts.