Legal Features

Articles

No room at the inn

The Housing Act 1996 was meant to provide a safety net for the homeless but some local authorities are avoiding their responsibilities, say Jim Shepherd and Nik Antoniades

Update: company and insolvency

Michael Twomey and Eamonn McNamara analyse the recent House of Lords' decision in McGrath v Riddell and how it will affect international insolvency rulings

Update: professional negligence

Spike Charlwood reviews cases on the test of dishonesty in civil proceedings, loss of a chance claims, the first case on limitation after Sephton, and claims against barristers

Civil litigation brief

This month Gordon Exall looks at guidance to litigants when the court is asked to exercise its discretion to grant relief from sanctions imposed under the CPR

Charity begins at the new Tribunal

Alison McKenna, first president of the new Charity Tribunal, talks to Jean-Yves Gilg about her priorities ahead of the new tribunals service roll-out

Knife through the stereotypes

ARound about the time I was still doing juvenile court crime – like delinquency, a practice one hopes to grow out of – the fashion was to blame all society's ills on single mothers. As far as the tabloids and government policy ( often indistinguishable, then as now) was concerned, their general fecklessness , indolence and irresponsibility was to blame for everything. Specifically, their pig headed refusal to have truck with the absent heroes who had fathered their children was the root cause of 'Britain's Breakdown'. It was always a surprise to go to court and meet the reality – worried, hard working, committed women trying to keep their families together against the odds. Not all of course – the odorously pissed mama, a stranger to education, employment or indeed soap, who swigged cans of loopy juice while letting rip to her strongly held views about immigration and shouting obscenities at her 11-year-old wasn't a particularly great advert for motherhood, or indeed our species. Her mantra was that Britain was no longer a place for the decent white working class, like her. After an afternoon of this I did mutter 'Well, one out of three ain't bad' but by then she was too drunk to hear it. But I remember her as a glorious exception to the norm – the majority were wilfully misrepresented.

Update: licensing

Roy Light reviews the latest practice and recent cases under the Licensing Act 2003

Joined by the HIP

Imran Khan explains how one firm of solicitors took the introduction of Home Information Packs as a commercial opportunity by setting up its own HIP company