In a significant ruling laid down by the European Court of Justice in late April, the EU Court rejected a claim by the European Commission that a public authority in Austria had breached EU procurement rules when it entered into a long lease for a new office building which had not yet been constructed.  Despite … Read more

A consultation has been published regarding the new Residential Property Developer Tax (“RPDT“), which is being introduced as part of a package of proposals to raise revenue for remediation work to unsafe cladding on high-rise residential buildings. It is a lengthy consultation, setting out details for what looks to be a complex tax relative to … Read more

On 21 April, a new permitted development (PD) right came into force enabling the owners of most town centre premises to change from Use Class E (commercial, business and service) to residential use, with only limited consent required from the local planning authority. The new PD right, Class MA, will be exercisable from 1 August … Read more

The property industry will by now be very familiar with the unprecedented raft of protective measures introduced by the Government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which suspended (and continue to suspend) a landlord’s ability to pursue remedies for the recovery of arrears (but also other covenant breaches). The practical effect of these measures is … Read more

One limb of the government’s strategy to bring greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is to target privately rented non-domestic properties and to bring the ratings of these properties up to an EPC B by 2030. A 2019 consultation identified that the main challenges to hitting this target centred on compliance and enforcement … Read more

Trium Environmental Consulting has recently published an excellent article entitled “ES reviews: the good the bad and the disproportionate”. The article outlines good practice in relation to ES reviews, which have grown in frequency and scope in recent years – in particular following the publication of the new EIA Regulations in 2017 and the requirement … Read more

As the country continues to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, many developers may now be considering how to change their projects to reflect an evolving real estate sector, whether as a direct result of the pandemic or due to the acceleration of existing underlying trends. Developers may be seeking to vary planning … Read more

On 18 March 2021, the Independent Review of Administrative Law published its report on reform to the judicial review process in which it made two substantive recommendations and a number of procedural recommendations. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice agreed with those recommendations and was “also interested in exploring proposals beyond these”. This … Read more