Recent Posts
Nicola Gooch
Court of Appeal Judgment: The path to unrestricted retail consents is paved with good intentions.
On Friday, the Court of Appeal handed down a Judgment* which reminds us all that in planning, as in life, what you intended to do often...
23/04/18
Nicola Gooch
Labour announces plans to completely re-define Affordable Housing
Labour has today launched a green paper entitled "Housing for the Many" setting out their proposals for the UK housing market. The green...
19/04/18
Joanne Moseley
EU moves to protect whistle-blowers
Following public scandals regarding the VW vehicle emissions and widespread tax avoidance schemes, the EU has said that it intends to...
17/04/18
Nicola Gooch
Three Judical Reviews : One Local Plan - Waverley Borough Council faces a barrage of legal action over housing numbers
Even the most hardened planning cynic has to feel some sympathy for Waverley Borough Council, which is currently facing three separate...
12/04/18
Joanne Moseley
Employers can pay women taking maternity leave more than men taking shared parental leave
The EAT has handed down an important decision in the case of Capita Customer Management Ltd v Ali which clarifies that employers who...
11/04/18
Irwin Mitchell
Give small builders a leg up...
...is not just some bad health and safety advice, it is the call from a cross party group of MPs who have released a report today with...
09/04/18
Nicola Gooch
Planning Update: A selection box of recent case law and a cautionary tale
As the cabinet seems to have taken a short break from announcing yet more planning reforms*, this post takes the form of a trip to the...
29/03/18
Irwin Mitchell
Stop blaming avocadoes for the housing crisis
There were a number of stories last year suggesting that mild-mannered millennials would be able to buy a home if they cut out the "flat...
16/03/18
Joanne Moseley
Unpaid trial shifts under the spotlight
MPs and unions are calling on the government to enact a blanket ban on unpaid shift work, describing it as “exploitation” by employers. ...
15/03/18
Irwin Mitchell
Letting Business premises? The RICS consults.......
It has been a busy time for the RICS recently on its consultations. First, the Service Charge Code revisions, where the new Code is due...
13/03/18
Nicola Gooch
Monday Morning News Flash: MHCLG Announce extended Agricultural to Residential PD Rights to come into effect on 6 April
Hot on the heels of last week's onslaught of planning consultations, Dominic Raab, our newest Housing Minister, has just announced that...
12/03/18
Irwin Mitchell
Tribunal service under pressure
The Ministry of Justice has published provisional employment tribunal statistics for October to December 2017 and it will come as no...
12/03/18
Joanne Moseley
New NMW register "names and shames" high profile employers whose uniform policies result in staff being underpaid
Latest figures published by the government name 179 employers who have underpaid 9,200 workers £1.1m collectively. Wagamama, TGI...
09/03/18
Joanne Moseley
Scottish firms warned not to punish staff who followed snow advice
According to the Guardian newspaper, Scotland's transport minister has said that employers who try to dock the wages of workers who could...
07/03/18
Nicola Gooch
Developer Contributions under review: Government suggests a major overhaul of CIL and s.106 Agreements... but consults on tweaks to the system
MHCLG has clearly had a busy few weeks, as today has seen the launch of not one but two consultations on major changes to the UK planning...
05/03/18
Nicola Gooch
Rumours that new draft NPPF is to be released on Monday
Planning Resource has just published news that the long awaited revisions to the NPPF may be released on Monday 5th March "according to...
02/03/18
Nicola Gooch
A Reminder to be Reasonable: Yet another judgment stressing the importance of reasoned decision-making
It is not exactly news that 'reasons' challenges against planning permissions have become fashionable again of late - in fact we had a...
23/02/18
Irwin Mitchell
Animals in residential properties - a pet hate?
The Times (from behind a paywall) have reported on a proposal by Labour to oblige residential landlords to allow tenants to keep pets,...
22/02/18
Lorraine Rose-Dugdale
Restrictive Covenants - Building Scheme
In the recent case of Khoury and another v Kensell heard on 9 February, the court found that there was insufficient evidence of an...
22/02/18
Joanne Moseley
Supreme court begins hearing plumber's employment case
It has always been difficult to correctly determine the employment status of some individuals, particularly those engaged under self...
21/02/18
Joanne Moseley
UK bosses believe women should tell them at interview if they are pregnant
A YouGov survey of 1,106 senior decision-makers revealed that a third of those working for private companies thought it was reasonable to...
21/02/18
Nicola Gooch
Land-Banking: The Myth that will not Die?
Anyone reading the papers today will have spotted reports about the Local Government Association's latest research, which is being used...
16/02/18
Nicola Gooch
CIL Appeal Decision: Failing to discharge pre-commencement conditions will not avoid CIL Liability
It is an age old proverb that that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. A proverb which can feel depressingly apt when...
12/02/18
Irwin Mitchell
Use it (quickly) or lose it
A white paper is expected shortly proposing changes to "value capture" and rules on implementation of planning permissions. The...
06/02/18
Nicola Gooch
Labour sees no value in "Hope": plans to change CPO rules to make landowners sell to the state at less than market value.
At the bottom of this post is a link to a Guardian Article which I recommend you read. In fact don't just read it, print it out and pass...
02/02/18
Nicola Gooch
Behind the Headlines: Planning news you may have missed this week
The news this week has been somewhat dominated by the collapse of Carillion, which means that planning news may well have slipped under...
19/01/18
Joanne Moseley
Calls to boycott company with 64.8% gender pay gap
All organisations employing 250 or more people have until 4 April this year (30 March for public authorities) to publish their gender pay...
18/01/18
Nicola Gooch
Neighbourhood Plans: Written Ministerial Statement Survives Legal Challenge.
At 10.30 this morning, the High Court issued its judgment in the Richborough Estates case*. For those who have not been following the...
12/01/18
Joanne Moseley
Why the Apprenticeship Levy is treated as another tax
John Timpson, the Chairman of Timpson, writing in The Telegraph newspaper explains why his company does not benefit from the annual...
09/01/18
Nicola Gooch
What a difference an 'H' makes: Government reshuffle results in a DCLG rebrand and another new Housing Minister
A week is certainly a long time in politics. It is six days since my last blog post and, not only has the rumoured reshuffle taken place,...
09/01/18