‘English water companies have spent £16.6m fighting legal action against regulators and campaigners over environmental breaches such as illegal sewage spills.’
The Guardian, 2nd September 2025
Source: www.theguardian.com
‘On 17 August 2023 the Ministry of Defence (MoD) put the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on broad notice about the devastating failure of data protection that is now generally known as the Afghan data breach (although sadly there have been many others). This involved the illegal release of some 33,000 lines of gravely sensitive personal spreadsheet data which put almost 100,000 people – up to 25,000 Afghans applying for relocation to the UK as well as their family members, many of whom were also identified in the data – at grave risk of harm and may even have resulted in some of their deaths. However, despite details of this egregious and illegal exposure of data subjects being immediately required by law and subsequently coming into view, the ICO decided not to carry out any investigation and therefore not to take any enforcement action, such as issuing a fine, enforcement notice or even a mere reprimand. Astonishingly, the ICO also made no contemporaneous record whatsoever of the rationale for these critical decisions or even the bare fact that they had been made. Given the exacting supervisory requirements set down in the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), these subsequent (in)actions expose further serious failings in UK data protection. These failings point to the need for an in-depth independent investigation of UK data protection regulation, which should also explore the serious gap between the UK GDPR’s promises and the ICO’s hyper-discretionary and hyper-selective track-record and approach and what might be done to address this. What follows merely provides a partial indication of some of the particular issues which arise in relation to Afghan spreadsheet data breach itself. It is based on the (still very limited) information which has come into public view so far and builds on a previous blog post on the same subject posted last month.’
UK Constitutional Law Association, 3rd September 2025
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org
‘Epping Forest District Council has asked for permission to take its case against a hotel housing asylum seekers to the Supreme Court.’
BBC News, 2nd September 2025
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘The Court of Appeal allowed the Claimant’s appeal against the decision of Nicklin J in PMC -v- A Local Health Board [2024] EWHC 2969 (KB). The judgment was written by Sir Geoffrey Vos MR, with whom Warby LJ and Whipple LJ agreed. Nicklin J had doubted the Court of Appeal’s decision in JX MX -v- Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust [2015] EWCA Civ 96.’
1 QMLR. 2nd September 2025
Source: 1corqmlr.com
‘The aunt of a toddler murdered by his grandparents has said he was failed by social services, who she believes should have done more to check on his welfare.’
BBC News, 2nd September 2025
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘The High Court has refused a local authority’s application for the extension of a Deprivation of Liberty order in relation to a 16-year-old young offender, finding that the management of the young person by the Youth Offender Team is “sufficient to exclude any reasonable cause for belief that [he] might suffer significant harm.”’
Local Government Lawyer, 2nd September 2025
Source: www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk
‘Under-16s in England will be banned from buying energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster because they fuel obesity, cause sleep problems and leave them unable to concentrate.’
The Guardian, 2nd September 2025
Source: www.theguardian.com
‘The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) should introduce a nominal complaint fee of £50 to “weed out those whom one might describe as ‘chancers’”, Birmingham Law Society has proposed.’
Legal Futures, 3rd September 2025
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘In May 2025, the government announced it was considering the roll-out of voluntary chemical castration for sex offenders and also looking at whether this could be made mandatory.’
BBC News, 3rd September 2025
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘This case concerns prisoners’ right to access rehabilitation courses under Article 5 ECHR. In short, European and domestic case law has established that in some circumstances, where a prisoner is serving a sentence which has a length determined by their degree of rehabilitation, providing no effective access to rehabilitation opportunities would mean they would be arbitrarily detained. This makes intuitive sense: how can the state detain an individual, subject to a single condition of release, but provide no opportunity for a prisoner to demonstrate that this condition has been satisfied?’
Administrative Court Blog, 2nd September 2025
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