‘Here is an interesting First Tier Tribunal bedroom tax appeal decision from Bexleyheath. [Decision notice]. It is a decision made after the Fife Upper Tribunal decision, but upholds the tenant’s appeal on the basis, in part, that the room is inadequately sized to be a bedroom, as well as being just too damn hot.’
NearlyLegal, 11th January 2015
Source: www.nearlylegal.co.uk
‘Desmond Rutledge provides a practice note on challenging a refusal of permission to appeal by the Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) in a welfare benefits case.’
Garden Court Chambers Blog, 6th January 2015
Source: www.gclaw.wordpress.com
‘Desmond Rutledge and Zubier Yazdani consider the hurdles facing welfare benefit claimants seeking to use the Cart test.’
Garden Court Chambers, Blog, 6th January 2015
Source: www.gclaw.wordpress.com
‘Over many years of representing landlords (usually by their appointed property management company) in leasehold service charge disputes before the Tribunals, various themes have developed. One of them is my frustration, in the majority of cases, at the quality of evidence with which I must present my client’s case. It actually isn’t that difficult to get your best evidence before the Tribunals and secure the best possible recovery. Especially with the benefit of hindsight!’
Hardwicke Chambers, 17th December 2014
Source: www.hardwickec.co.uk
CC & C Ltd v Revenue and Customs Comrs [2014] EWCA Civ 1653; [2014] WLR (D) 557
‘In exceptional cases, the court could entertain a claim for judicial review of a decision, under section 100G(5) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, to revoke the registration of a registered excise dealer and shipper and could make an order for interim re-registration pending determination of that claim where it was arguable that the decision was not simply unreasonable but was unlawful on some other ground, such as being an abuse of power or improper or taken in bad faith.’
WLR Daily, 19th December 2014
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
‘If you are an advisor who only occasionally dabbles with tax issues in settlements for fear of having to delve into murky tax law, take note of a recent decision providing a lucid summary of the relevant principles. The case is also a cautionary tale for claimants challenging tax assessments as the claimant’s unsuccessful challenge before the First-Tier Tax Tribunal (FTT) resulted in a tax bill larger than the one sent to him by HMRC. If Oti-Obhihara [2011] IRLR 386 and Orthet v Vince Cain [2005] ICR 374 ring a distant bell from advising on settlements past, they should now be retuned to the sound of alarm bells as the FTT in Moorthy v HMRC [2014] UKFTT 834 (TC) has doubted their correctness.’
Cloisters, 12th December 2014
Source: www.cloisters.com
‘I’ve now come across two cases in which judges of the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber have imposed unwanted anonymity orders on parties without any application or notice. One case is reported here and the other can’t be reported because of, well, the anonymity order. In both cases there was media interest beforehand and the orders acts as a gagging orders, preventing the parties from discussing their case with the media, even though the cases and the identities of the appellants had already been reported. In one of the cases the appellant had a child and that provided the reason or pretext for imposing anonymity. In the other unreported case children are named in the determination but are entirely tangental to the case and could easily have not been named.’
Free Movement, 17th December 2014
Source: www.freemovement.org.uk
‘The introduction of EHC plans for some 16-25 year olds was one of the most important changes to SEN in the Children and Families Act 2014. Under the previous regime, a special educational needs statement could not provide for a young person to attend further education or higher education. Even if the child remained in a school setting post-16, the statement would lapse (if the local authority had not already ceased to maintain it) when the young person turned 19, although the local authority could choose to maintain it until the end of that academic year. Young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities who were moving into further education, training or higher education received instead a learning difficulties assessment. This assessment would result in a written report of their educational and training needs and the provision required to meet them (“the LDA”). Any challenge to an LDA was by way of judicial review (as, in contrast to the position for challenges to the contents of SEN statements, there was no statutory right of appeal to the tribunal). That is all changing, with the introduction of EHC plans, which can continue until the young person reaches the age of 25, which can include further education provision (but still not higher education) and which can be appealed to the tribunal. Whilst EHC plans were introduced on 1 September 2014, there is a fairly lengthy transition period and so LDAs will be with us for a little longer yet.’
Education Law Blog, 16th December 2014
Source: www.education11kbw.com
‘This is a fascinating case, not just on the facts or merits but because it is generated by two of the major catalysts of public law litigation: the government’s duty to look after the security of its citizens, and the rapid outpacing of surveillance law by communications technology. Anyone who has seen The Imitation Game, a film loosely based on the biography of Alan Turing, will appreciate the conflicting currents at the core of this case: the rights of an individual to know, and foresee, what the limits of his freedom are, and the necessity to conceal from the enemy how much we know about their methods. Except the Turing film takes place in official wartime, whereas now the state of being at “war” has taken on a wholly different character.’
Full story
UK Human Rights Blog, 11th December 2014
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
‘There is an interesting little point on costs buried away in last week’s decision in the “Ethernet” disputes in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (see BT plc v Cable & Wireless Worldwide Plc and others [2014] CAT 20).’
Competition Bulletin from Blackstone Chambers, 11th December 2014
Source: www.competitionbulletin.com
‘The justice secretary wants to restrict access to judicial reviews, but judging the lawfulness of executive action should not be a matter for the executive.’
The Guardian, 10th December 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Yesterday the Court of Appeal gave a vote of confidence in CICA’s recent policy change on FASD inflicted injuries. The Court concluded that, as a foetus was not ‘any other person’ in the eyes of the criminal law, the mother’s damagingly excessive alcohol consumption was NOT an act of violence susceptible to compensation.
Zenith PI Blog, 9th December 2014
Source: www.zenithpi.wordpress.com
‘A mother who drank alcohol to excess while she was pregnant, resulting her child being born with permanent damage from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, was not criminally liable for administering poison to “any other person” so as to inflict grievous bodily harm contrary to section 23 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Because a foetus was not “any other person” for the purposes of section 23, and the harm had been inflicted on the child while she was in the womb, the child was not entitled to criminal injuries compensation.’
WLR Daily, 4th December 2014
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
‘The backlog of tax disputes waiting to be heard has reached a new record high with a particular surge in the number of high value cases lodged with the Upper Tribunal, according to Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com.’
OUT-LAW.com, 25th November 2014
Source: www.out-law.com
‘A Tribunal tasked with resolving a dispute that goes to arbitration should not decide the outcome of the case by adopting a legal approach neither of the parties to the dispute has put forward without allowing the parties to query that approach, the High Court has ruled.’
OUT-LAW.com, 10th November 2014
Source: www.out-law.com
‘A UK court has ruled that pay TV broadcaster BSkyB must make its Sky Sports 1 and 2 channels available on rival BT’s YouView service.’
BBC News, 5th November 2014
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) has upheld the Care Quality Commission’s refusal to supply the names of individuals who provided it with legal advice on the de-registration of a care agency.’
Local Government Lawyer, 5th November 2014
Source: www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk
‘Philosophically, everything must have an inherent weight. Otherwise it would have no weight at all. But FOIA is not concerned with philosophy; it is much more concerned with who is in charge of the sheep dip, and indeed the levels of public funding for the sheep being dipped. (No points for spotting that reference, Bruce.) As a result, there are often debates in the FOIA case law about whether a particular qualified exemption contains an inherent weight, i.e. is the fact that the exemption is engaged at all sufficient to place some weight in the public interest balance against disclosure? The answer varies according to the particular exemption.’
Panopticon, 29th October 2014
Source: www.panopticonblog.com
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