Recent Posts
Joanne Moseley
Budget: National Living Wage to increase by 33 pence per hour
Buried under the headlines of the Budget, the Government has announced that the National Living Wage will increase from £7.50 to £7.83...
22/11/17
Nicola Gooch
Budget 2017: Disappointing CIL Reforms & Other 'News'
It is probably a good thing that I have not been waiting on today's CIL announcement with bated breath. For one thing, the Government's...
22/11/17
Nicola Gooch
Tough talk from Ministers over the weekend, but will this be a 'House-Building' Budget?
I fully intend to make up for my spectacularly failure to write a piece last week*, by boring you all with at least two budget related...
20/11/17
Nicola Gooch
Concreting over the Countryside - an English 'Urban' Myth
Earlier this week, the BBC Website published a really interesting research tool, which allows you to look up the percentage of land in a...
09/11/17
Joanne Moseley
Sexual harassment in the workplace: Rehabilitating the perpetrator
I woke up this morning to news that Kelvin Hopkins, Labour MP for Luton North has had the parliamentary whip suspended following...
03/11/17
Irwin Mitchell
Got something to say about Commercial Service Charges?
Residential service charges are subject to statutory control. In the commercial world, however, many a tenant has been mauled by what...
02/11/17
Nicola Gooch
Neighbourhood Plans: Developers draw first blood in the Battle of the Written Ministerial Statement
You may recall some controversy, at the start of the year, over a written ministerial statement which Gavin Barwell, the former planning...
31/10/17
Joanne Moseley
Are "high jinks" ever an acceptable explanation for harassment?
According to newspaper reports, a dossier has identified 36 Conservative MPs accused of various forms of inappropriate behaviour towards...
31/10/17
Nicola Gooch
Supportive of Tunbridge Wells: A local view of the ABC Cinema Site and its lack of Affordable Housing.
Those of you who have a Planning Resource subscription may have noticed an article, published yesterday, which commented on a mixed use...
26/10/17
Irwin Mitchell
Poor mobile signal? - not for long (hopefully). Important news for landowners
Most of you would have no doubt seen the ample coverage of the new electronic communications code which is being brought in to drag...
23/10/17
Nicola Gooch
Housing & Finance Institute Report: Land Banking is a Myth, Conventional Wisdom about the Housing Crisis is Wrong, and maybe Councillors shouldn't vote on planning applications in their own wards....
Earlier this week the Housing & Finance Institute published its report into the causes of the Housing Crisis in London. The report...
19/10/17
Nicola Gooch
Politics and Planning: Tis the Season for Mixed Messages
A bit like preparations for Christmas, the season of pre-budget reporting seems to begin earlier each year. We are just over four weeks...
18/10/17
Joanne Moseley
New leave allowance on the cards for bereaved parents
My dad died a couple of weeks ago. Grief assaulted me like a wrecking ball. I was lucky - my employers offered support and...
16/10/17
Nicola Gooch
Politics and Planning: Research shows a link between Secretary of State decisions and the 'colour' of the Council
Earlier today, Planning Resource published a report on a research project that Irwin Mitchell has been carrying out over the last few...
13/10/17
Joanne Moseley
One in three work sickness notes related to mental health
Millions of us are affected by mental illness each year, with new official data revealing that one in three work sickness notes handed...
13/10/17
Irwin Mitchell
Calling all Landlords - Guidance on Minimum Energy Efficiency
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has published guidance for domestic and non-domestic landlords to assist in...
12/10/17
Nicola Gooch
London Councils express concern over proposed hike in Mayoral CIL rates.
Over the summer, the Mayor of London ran a consultation which proposed significantly increasing the rates of Mayoral CIL charged across...
09/10/17
Irwin Mitchell
welcome news on social housing rents
DCLG has announced that from 2020 to 2025 housing associations are entitled to increase their rents by 1% over CPI inflation. Sounds...
06/10/17
Nicola Gooch
DCLG Considers using CIL Receipts to fund new Neighbourhood Plans.
Last week, Planning Resource published a story which got fairly close to ruining my day*. DCLG are inviting tenders for a contract to...
02/10/17
Joanne Moseley
EU considering ways to protect 'gig' and zero hours workers
According to the Independent newspaper the European Commission wants more social protection and rights for casual workers, such as those...
28/09/17
Nicola Gooch
Localism v The Pro-Growth Agenda: MP requests DCLG intervention in Maidstone Local Plan
Anyone who thought that encouraging the adoption of up-to-date Local Plans would prove a panacea for England's planning and housing woes...
25/09/17
Irwin Mitchell
Flexible Working
We often find that there is a clash of approach between employers and the law when it comes to flexible working requests. Many employers...
22/09/17
Irwin Mitchell
Can Prefab homes solve the UK's housing crisis
We want to share banking and development specialist Laura Mitchell's article for the Manchester Property Group on how modular and offsite...
21/09/17
Irwin Mitchell
Cancelling holidays
At the risk of wading in to what looks like a really messy workplace dispute...readers might be interested to know that Ryan Air may well...
21/09/17
Irwin Mitchell
Land Registry Issues Change of Gender Form - by Lorraine Rose
The Land Registry has this week launched a new form enabling a registered owner to update their name on the registered title following a...
20/09/17
Lorraine Rose-Dugdale
Land Registry Issues Change of Gender Form
The Land Registry has this week launched a new form enabling a registered owner to update their name on the registered title following a...
20/09/17
Joanne Moseley
Two-thirds of employers not using levy funds to train staff
The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced on 6 April 2017 and requires employers with a payroll of over £3 million to pay 0.5% of their...
20/09/17
Nicola Gooch
Things you might have missed in the DCLG Consultation: It's not all about Housing Need
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the best way to prompt the release of a consultation document, that you are actually...
19/09/17
Irwin Mitchell
Waning confidence bites. Can Brexit be blamed?
The Times has published an interesting, although worrying article on the performance of shop openings in the second quarter of the year....
14/09/17
Nicola Gooch
The Enforcer: The Mayor of London gets tough on Affordable Housing Provision
If Boris Johnson will always be remembered as the Mayor who introduced the 'Boris Bike' to the capital; then the current Mayor of London,...
08/09/17