PLC Public Sector reports:
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Duty to consult: the following two decisions dealing with the duty to consult will be of particular interest to local authorities:
- In R (Milton Keynes Council and others) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the High Court held that the government’s short informal consultation on relaxing the planning laws relating to houses in multiple occupation was sufficient since the consultation was essentially covering matters that had already been dealt with in an earlier formal consultation in 2009.
- For those local authorities faced with making significant expenditure savings, the decision of the High Court in R (W) v Birmingham City Council is a timely reminder that when taking budgetary decisions, the authority must ask itself the right questions concerning the applicable equality duties and ensure that the consultation which is undertaken cannot be subsequently challenged as flawed. Although the decision in W concerned the Council’s disability discrimination duty under section 49A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which has now been replaced by the public sector equality duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the legal principles raised by the case on the proper interpretation of the duty continue to apply.
Employment: employer lawyers should be aware that:
- The Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed an out of time unfair dismissal claim to proceed on the basis it was reasonable for the unrepresented claimant to wait until the outcome of their internal appeal before enquiring about how to make a claim, by which time the statutory three-month time limit had passed, see John Lewis Partnership v Charman.
- Employers will not have complied with their obligation to notify employees of their right to request working beyond retirement unless the employee has been notified of the essential conditions for exercising that right, see Bailey v R & R Plant (Peterborough) Ltd. Employers cannot remedy any breach by issuing fresh notices since the last date for issuing such notices was 5 April 2011.
FOIA/EIR: although the decision turned on its particular facts, information officers will be interested to see that the First-tier Tribunal has upheld the Information Commissioner’s decision that a request for details of council officers who had conducted an Environmental impact assessment fell within the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 regime and was not a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Local authority finance: local authority finance officers should be aware that the Department for Communities and Local Government has published the Housing Revenue (Accounting Practices) Directions 2011. These will effect the Housing Revenue Accounts of local housing authorities in England for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2010.
Procurement: local procurement officers may be interested to know that the High Court has confirmed in R (Harrow Solicitors and Advocates) v The Legal Services Commission that tenderers do not have the right to correct errors in bids. However, the High Court did draw a distinction between the situation where a contracting authority might have a duty to seek a simple clarification of ambiguous terms of a bid (on the basis it would be unfair to exclude a bidder from the tender when it would be fairly easy to seek clarification about an obvious ambiguity or clerical error) and where the authority is under no obligation to rectify a genuine mistake by the bidder which does not give rise to an ambiguity on the face of the tender document.
Property and planning: the following decisions will be of interest to property and planning lawyers:
- The Court of Appeal’s decision in Grand v Gill that the plaster on the walls and ceiling was part of the structure of a flat and the landlord was in breach of his repairing obligations by failing to repair it.
- The Court of Appeal’s decision in Avon Estates Ltd v Welsh Ministers and others that a planning condition attached to a temporary planning permission did not remain in force once the time limit condition had become unenforceable.
Housing: housing practitioners will be interested in:
- The Court of Appeal’s decision in Oxford City Council v Bull, where the Court of Appeal held that a claimant had made himself intentionally homeless by allowing his three children to move into his single room in a shared house when they had previously been residing with at their mother’s property.
- A guide for social housing providers on the Human Rights Act 1998 published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
- Two online toolkits published by the Homes and Communities Agency intended to assist local authorities and communities to identify empty homes in their areas and to bring them back into use.
Consultations: this week there were consultations published on: