Last 3 months headlines – Page 1250
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Bump up fees?
Affidavits and declarations attracted fees of £3.50 plus £1 for each exhibit from 1 July 1988, but were increased to £5 plus £2 for each exhibit on 18 October 1993.
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Planning – costs and material considerations
Can a planning authority take cost into account when considering whether or not to revoke a planning consent? And just what are ‘material considerations’ in planning legislation? If the answer to these questions has been keeping you anxiously awake, you can now sleep peacefully. The Supreme Court has recently prescribed ...
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Does new justice secretary’s lack of legal experience matter?
Judging by the look of its website on Tuesday morning, the Ministry of Justice still seems to be reeling a week after the replacement of almost all its ministers. There was little more on its main news page than a staged photograph of Chris Grayling, the new justice secretary and ...
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Cable called in over conveyancing panel culls
Business secretary Vince Cable has been asked to intervene to resolve problems caused to law firms and consumers by banks restricting membership of their conveyancing panels. Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson has asked Cable to mediate talks between the Society, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, ...
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Council lawyers create first-time buyer boost
A local authority has launched a £12m scheme to revive the housing market by giving first-time buyers an affordable way to take out mortgages of up to £350,000. The scheme, drafted by Kent County Council’s (KCC) legal team, is designed to help hundreds of first-time buyers purchase homes with a ...
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Personal injury firms face rising claims
Negligence claims against personal injury firms for under-value settlements are increasing rapidly, the Gazette has been told. Professional negligence lawyers say that firms’ reliance on under-qualified staff, a lack of face-to-face contact with clients and failure to understand medical reports are all factors in the trend.
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Late LSC fees ‘drive barristers out of practice’
Late payment of fees by the Legal Services Commission (LSC) is driving barristers out of private practice, it has been alleged. Gareth Roberts, a barrister at Linenhall Chambers in Chester, said that delays in payment have lengthened since the LSC took over the processing and payment ...
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Don’t be ‘hoodwinked’ over rules, SRA warned
A former senior City watchdog has warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority that it is being ‘hoodwinked’ into liberalising rules relating to financial advisers. The SRA is set to reveal whether it will relax a rule requiring lawyers to refer clients to wholly independent advisers. Arguing that ...
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Manchester firms rebel against weekend courts
Manchester law firms are refusing to ask staff to attend magistrates’ courts at weekends because they say to do so would require a unilateral change to contracts of employment and invite claims of unfair dismissal. The firms say that some staff could claim constructive dismissal on ...
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Criminal bar chief: unity can help resist 'extinction'
Criminal solicitors and barristers should stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ to oppose further fee cuts or risk ‘virtual extinction’ within five years, the new chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has warned. In an interview with the Gazette, Michael Turner QC (pictured) reiterated the association’s opposition ...
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Colombian lawyers ‘still at risk’
The prospect of talks to try to resolve Latin America’s longest civil war has not lifted the threat of unlawful detention, assault and murder facing human rights lawyers in Colombia, a visit by an international legal charity has heard. Between 7 August 2010 and 31 ...
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Support for call to curb hospital and school legal claims
A thinktank arguing for tough limits on legal claims against hospitals and schools is confident it has the support of the relevant government departments, the Gazette can reveal. The Social Cost of Litigation, published this week by the Conservative-leaning Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), argues ...
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Legal consultant scales The Shard
Mark Hatt-Cook, a consultant to West Country and London firm Wilsons Solicitors, was among the participants in the abseil descent of Europe’s tallest building, The Shard, last week. Hatt-Cook, 69, has been with the firm for 40 years – but is also a former commanding officer of Royal Marines (City ...
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Frustrating it may seem - but it's necessary to answer health-based litigation charges
The Social Cost of Litigation, published by Conservative thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies, has rude things to say about ‘greedy lawyers’. As we report, social commentator Frank Furedi and co-author Jennie Bristow find that lawyers are the chief beneficiaries of ‘the non-quantifiable but nevertheless destructive consequences of litigation culture’. ...
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Advisers on compromise agreements 'manipulated'
by Nicholas Lakeland, head of the employment and pensions team at Silverman Sherliker As an employment lawyer, I am used to advising on compromise agreements, no more so than in recent years.
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Expert report calls for more action on people trafficking
A ‘significant number’ of child victims of human trafficking go missing from UK local authority care and back into the hands of people smugglers, a report published this week warns. The report, compiled by the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in ...
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Spending watchdog trains fire on interpreter contracting chaos
The Ministry of Justice has come under fire from public spending watchdogs for awarding a £90m contract for court interpreters to a company that lacked the ability to deliver it. In a damning report on the outsourcing of language services in the justice system to Applied ...
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Helen lets rip
Obiter would like to congratulate Helen Grant on her ascension to a ministerial role at the Ministry of Justice. The Maidstone MP, who entered parliament only in 2010, replaces Jonathan Djanogly, who has been given the chance to spend more time with his constituents after the ...
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Shades of Grayling baffle staff
When Kenneth Clarke, the 72-year-old veteran minister of the Thatcher and Major years, joined the coalition’s team at the Ministry of Justice, there would have been no mistaking the identity of the man in brown suede shoes when he popped in at Petty France. But ...
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Backing Boris
Another minister who is hardly a household name is our new solicitor general, the barrister and Hertfordshire Conservative MP Oliver Heald. This is a bit unfair as Heald is one of the very few shufflees to have ministerial experience. As a junior minister in the ...