Protection of the Green Belt can often clash with the need to foster economic growth and high employment. In one High Court case which illustrated the point, a company which employs 40,000 people in the UK had its hopes of building an office block in the countryside put back on track. The company wished to build the block on an existing car park in the grounds...

Selective licensing schemes in respect of private rented homes are an increasingly popular means of tackling crime and anti-social behaviour and one High Court case has underlined their legal and financial significance for residential landlords. A London borough had introduced such a scheme under the Housing Act 2004 with the objective of ensuring that licences...

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published new guidance (144 pages) designed to give businesses a comprehensive guide to complying with their obligations as regards the unfair contract terms provisions under Part Two of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The guidance covers what makes terms and notices unfair and the likely consequences of using unfair...

The Court of Appeal has dismissed Unison’s appeal against the decision of the High Court that it had failed to make its case that the introduction of Employment Tribunal (ET) fees in July 2013 was unlawful. In Lord Justice Underhill’s view, the case based on the overall decline in the number of ET claims could not succeed by itself: it needed to be...

When it comes to assessing the environmental impact of developments, planners must consider projects as a whole and refrain from salami-slicing them into their constituent parts. That issue arose in a case in which planning permission was granted for a link road to serve a development of 4,000 new homes. The road was to be part of a bypass for which there had...