All articles by Nicholas Dobson – Page 4
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News
Greenwich LBC sees off equality challenge
Greenwich Community Law Centre (the law centre) once again failed to overturn a decision by Greenwich London Borough Council (the council) after the law centre was not reappointed following a recommissioning exercise. On 24 April, the Court of Appeal, in upholding the 21 December 2011 decision of Cranston J, found ...
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Travellers, homelessness and bricks and mortar
Basildon Borough Council did not act unlawfully when offering bricks and mortar accommodation to homeless former Dale Farm travellers. So found the Court of Appeal on 21 March 2012 in Sheridan and others v Basildon Borough Council [2012] EWCA Civ 335, which also usefully considered the extent of a housing ...
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Revised FIT hit in solar plexus
Government plans to amend the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) scheme were torpedoed again on 25 January, this time by the Court of Appeal. The scheme had already taken a first instance hit before Christmas with the judgment of Mitting J. However, following the Court of Appeal’s judgment, and while former energy ...
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Sharon Shoesmith case: accountability and fairness
Power politics can be brutal to those perceived as prejudicial. A former Archbishop of Canterbury found this out to his cost. For in December 1170, Thomas Becket was murdered at Canterbury Cathedral in apparent compliance with the wishes of King Henry II, with whom he had had a series of ...
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Public sector equality duty
If you want a sombre take on equality then seventeenth-century poet James Shirley is your man. For he reminds us that we all share a certain mortal destiny. And since death will eventually lay ‘his icy hand on kings’ so ‘Sceptre and crown/Must tumble down/And ...
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Proportionality and housing possession – the sequel
On 23 February the Supreme Court gave judgment in what was effectively episode two of the housing possession proportionality drama (see the conjoined appeal in London Borough of Hounslow v Powell [2011] UKSC 8). Back in November 2010 the Supreme Court had made an important ...
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Local government and mayoral chief executives
The mother of parliaments has irreverently been described as a ‘palace of varieties’. For, despite the seriousness of the business before MPs, the House of Commons can often look like pantomime knockabout. The ‘oh no it isn’t, oh yes it is’ of prime minister’s questions ...
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Localism Bill – running the rule over council powers
The Localism Bill, published on 13 December, is a substantial and important piece of legislation. It has 207 clauses in eight parts and 24 schedules in 406 pages.
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Local authority publicity and housing possessions
That the government shop is under new management is clear. It has a radical new look and feel – and an impatient determination to slim the entire operation and to reshape fundamentally the focus of policy. These impressions were reinforced on 29 September when Communities and Local Government issued its ...
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The Audit Commission and legal professional privilege
On 13 August 2010, communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles announced the Audit Commission’s forthcoming demise. He claimed that the commission had ‘lost its way’, moving from being a watchdog championing taxpayers’ interests to a ‘creature of the Whitehall state’.
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News
Public health – back to the future
We humans are a discontented lot, constantly seeking release from the imprisonment of the present. Fashions ebb and flow; and if you wait long enough, what was already obsolete yesterday will surely become today’s ‘must-have’. Thus, as Shakespeare’s clown in Twelfth Night would have it, ‘... the whirligig of time ...
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Local government: general competence to restore vires confidence
If money does actually make the world go round (as enthusiastically asserted by MC and Sally Bowles in the 1972 film Cabaret) then it is confidence that fuels it. For, as we have all been experiencing, just as confidence ebbs, so does the economic system slow down and stagnate. And ...
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News
Local government – Taxi! Breach of consultation and apparent bias, please
Taxis take you wherever you want to go, but Newport City Council’s taxi ride to the Administrative Court didn’t end well for the authority.
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Local government: a feast of legislation and a claim of discrimination
For those who loved the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, 12 November 2009 will have been an emotional day. It was then that, with one touch of the royal wand, the bill became an act of parliament.
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Government: local authority mutual insurance companies
Pity really, everyone was having such a wonderful time. It was, as the saying goes, a swell party and one designed to save lots of money. But then, all of a sudden, there was a raid: the front door was kicked in, the music stopped and everyone had to go ...
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Local government: determining bias – and what is a public authority?
‘In law,’ Lord Steyn once reminded us, ‘context is everything’. And context was particularly relevant on 24 June this year, when the Court of Appeal agreed with Mr Justice Collins that a planning inspector’s decision was tainted by apparent bias...
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Local government - London Authorities Mutual Limited
The phoenix is a splendid mythical bird that is serious about regeneration. Near the end of its 500-1,000 year lifecycle it burns itself to ashes, only to emerge anew to live through another lifetime.
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Pre-contract discussions: useful, but won’t work in court
Funny things, contracts. They start their lives in a honeymoon of smiles and happy expectation, as the parties individually believe their interests have been buttoned down firmly and fortified with ‘hoops of steel’. But time passes, events happen, and the document is eventually pulled out of a dusty cupboard to ...
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Local government law: age discrimination
How LIFO (last in, first out on redundancy) fares under ageism laws is a subject with far-reaching impact for local government lawyers.
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Local government: surveillance powers, tenancy and effective consultation
There is always a public authority tension between what might be called 'customer-centred governance' and regulation. So while most local authorities will try to be 'customer responsive' to their council tax payers and other stakeholders, their regulatory functions mean that not everyone will always feel treated as a 'customer'. For, ...