The much anticipated sixth judgment (“the Horizon Judgment”) in the long-running group litigation against the Post Office (“POL”) brought by some 550 current and former sub-postmasters (“the Group Action”),...

2020 looks set to be a significant year for privacy, cyber security and Internet content reforms in China and Hong Kong. On 20 December 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the “Regulation on Governance of Internet Information...

  Throughout 2019, we saw a growing promulgation of guidance, consultations and new laws across the world. In light of such a regulatory landscape beginning to form, there is growing debate as to whether or not Artificial Intelligence (“A...

(Note that this is an updated version an article originally published in 2016) In the era of the “digital economy” (with more than half of our shopping done on-line and 44% of UK on-line1 payments made using a mobile device2), companies ...

Expert evidence in procurement claims – no general admission On 28 September 2012 the High Court rejected an application under...

Registered Providers to face longer, more complicated and more expensive claims? The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 ("LAPSO") LAPSO received Royal Assent on 1 May 2012 and will come into force on 1 April 2013. It will hav...

The Charities Act 2006 (now the Charities Act 2011) introduced a new form of incorporated charitable entity, the CIO.  There has been a long delay in making CIOs available but their imminent arrival has been heralded by a recent government anno...

The European Commission has announced proposals to amend the Enabling Regulation adopted in 1998. This forms part of the EC’s State Aid Modernisation Initiative. It will allow the EC to focus on larger more...

? Recently, the Equality and Human Rights Commission EHRC published detailed technical guidance for those public sector bodies seeking to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). There is separate guidance for Scotland, England and Wales....

The European Commission (the "EC") presented two proposals on 5 December 2012, as part of its State Aid Modernisation initiative. The proposals will include amendments to two key State aid instruments, the Enabling Regulation and...

The court has recently considered the extent of disclosure required to satisfy the obligation of fairness in a consultation exercise in the case of R (on the application of Save our Surgery Limited) v Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts  (&l...

Local Government Pension Scheme liabilities on academy conversionsBackground The treatment of Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) liabilities on academy conversions has been presenting significant difficulties for some time, with pension liabilit...

Code of Conduct for Operational PFI/PPPs HM Treasury recently published a brand new PFI/PPP code of conduct (the ‘Code’) which is aimed at delivering savings in operational PPP contracts. What has been introduced? ...

Local authority elections will take place this year on 22 May 2014. This is later than would usually be expected because a statutory instrument was made to allow them to be held at the same time as the European elections. This briefing note provides...

Freedom of information and the private sector -  the next chapter in transparency by the Coalition Government Extension to Transparency agenda and Freedom of Information In March 2014, Justice Minister Simon Hughes MP stated: “We do inten...

From a planning perspective the Bill does not envisage major regime change, but rather concentrates on refinements to the nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIP) system and includes a measure aimed at accelerating decisions at a local ...

Following the unsuccessful “save the library” challenge against Brent Council in 2011, comes another  High Court judgment in judicial review proceedings involving a Council’s decision to achieve spending cuts by reducing its l...

Almost a decade to the day after the rejection by voters of a regional assembly for the North East, the announcement has been made of a historic agreement between government and the 10 Greater Manchester authorities that could lead to the devolution...

The Local Government Pension Scheme (Amendment)(Governance) Regulations 2015 were laid before Parliament on 28 January 2015.  Issued under the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, these...

On 4 February 2015, the government launched a consultation on draft regulations implementing the cap on care costs contained in the Care Act 2014. The consultation also sought views on the need for new appeals system in relation to local authorities...

With the dust settling after the recent General Election, it is possible to better speculate as to the likely direction of travel of the new Conservative government. The new administration has a slim majority, therefore, there still may be an elemen...

Background The Government’s latest proposal in reforming the English schooling system was laid before Parliament last week in the form of the Education and Adoption Bill 2015-16 (“the Bill”). The Bill sets out provisions to conver...

Key Principles The public law duty to consult is one aspect of the principle that public authorities should exercise fairness in the exercise of their functions. Where the duty to consult is imposed by statute, then the procedure to be adopted is al...

Remember to Comply with the Health & Safety Executive Guidance Introduction The High Court (Queen's Bench Division) recently handed down judgment in the case of X v Northampton BC. The judgment is a reminder that a failure to comply with guidanc...

Supreme Court reinforces the need to interpret clauses by the words used and their "natural meaning" On 10 June 2015, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of Arnold v Britton and others [2015] UKSC 36, which concerned the interpretatio...

Introduction The Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill 2015 (“the Bill”) is currently before Parliament. The Bill is relatively short and deals with two areas in particular: i) the powers of charities to make social investmen...

On the 5th October the Chancellor George Osborne, set out the Government's plans to devolve powers from Whitehall to local areas in a bid to stimulate economic growth. The initiative was heralded as the “biggest transfer of power to local gove...

Closing a loophole? One of the key features, and one of the most contentious provisions, of the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill 2015 (“the Bill”) is the new power it will grant the Charity Commission (“the Commission”) to issue of...

A commitment to reduce public sector termination packages has seen the Government explore various proposals for reform in recent years; from draft regulations seeking recovery of termination payments, to a financial cap upon the amount of any indivi...

The Prime Minister announced on 18 April that a General Election will be held on Thursday 8 June. Parliament will be dissolved on 3 May and we wait with interest to see what planned legislation will survive the trauma of the current Parliament&rsqu...

Brand protection is a key issue for retailers. As brands continue to increase their presence online a key aspect is the protection of brands in domain names. Until fairly recently, the number of generic top level domains (“gTLDs&rdqu...

On Thursday 12 February Eversheds hosted its annual Retail conference to discuss and debate key topics and issues impacting the sector. Keynote speech, Mike Ahanchian, BRC - The changing face of Retail The  Retail conference was kicked off by M...

Competition Law E-Briefing: Fashion sector competition probe On Tuesday 24 March 2015, the UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (the “CMA”), opened an investigation into suspected anti-competitive arrangements in the UK ...

The UK is changing the way in which it taxes share options and share awards held by employees who move between countries. Some employees will gain and some employees will lose. As an employer, if you have employees on assignment from overseas or you...

The Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”) has published a consultation document providing the proposed fee structure of the UPC, a table of court fees, and details of the ceilings for recoverable costs. The consultat...

The protection of trade secrets has been on the European legislator’s agenda since 2011. It was felt that the lack of harmonisation in this field is very disadvantageous for cross-border innovation in Europe. After the initial report requested...

New rules in the FCA’s policy statement on Guaranteed Asset Protection (GAP) insurance (PS15/13) are about to change the way GAP insurance sold alongside the sale of a motor vehicle (add-on GAP Insurance) is sold to both consumers and commerci...

On 31 March 2015, the German Federal Cartel Office (“Bundeskartellamt”, BKartA) announced that it has blocked the proposed takeover of approximately 450 Kaiser’s Tengelmann supermarket branches by EDEKA, the leading German food ret...

It has been reported that the European Commission (the “Commission”) is asking retailers to detail the difficulties they face while trying to sell their products online, as part of the lengthy questionnaires sent to the retailers followi...

R (on the application of Tesco Stores Limited) v Forest of Dean District Council and (1) JD Norman Lydney Limited (2) Asda Stores Limited (3) Windmill Limited (4) MMC Land & Regeneration Limited1 The Court of Appeal, upholding a decision of the ...

We are delighted to be sponsoring this year’s World Retail Congress taking place on 8 – 10 September in Rome. The theme to this year’s Congress is ‘Transformation today, tomorrow and beyond’, key to which for many retailers is international expansio...

The UK’s new Consumer Rights Act ( the “CRA” ) becomes effective on the 1st October 2015. As we have previously mentioned whilst this consolidates existing UK consumer law it also brings in some significant changes to the laws appl...

On 9 September 2015, in his first State of the Union address, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for a review of the power wielded over food markets by groups of retailers and the “need to break some retail oligopolies&rd...

On 9 September 2015, in his first State of the Union address, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for a review of the power wielded over food markets by groups of retailers and the “need to break some retail oligopolies&rd...

On 17 September 2015, the House of Lords EU Internal Market Sub-Committee (“the Committee”) launched an inquiry into the regulation of online platforms in the EU. The Committee intends to gather evidence on the benefits and problems online platforms...

Selective Distribution – Some recent developments in the adidas case: when can sales via online platforms be restricted? On 18 November 2015, the Autorité de la concurrence (the “French Competition Authority” or “...

On 11 May 2016 the Commission blocked an acquisition of Teléfonica UK’s O2 by Hutchison 3G UK’s Three, casting doubt on the acceptability of ‘four to three’ mergers in the mobile sector. The Commission expressed concer...

The last two years have brought challenging times for ratepayers and there is little respite on the horizon. With the 2017 Revaluation looming, rateable values are likely to increase substantially throughout large swathes of the country. Together wi...

On 29 September 2016, the French Competition Authority (l’Autorité de la concurrence - the “Autorité”) imposed a fine of EUR 2.4 million on 37 model agencies and their main trade association, the SYNAM, in relation to...

The European Commission has launched three investigations into suspected breach of the competition rules by companies in the consumer electronics, videogames and hotel sectors.  The consumer electronics and videogames probes come out of the Com...