Local Authority round-up 16/06/23

Commercial

£10 million funding for councils through DLUHC’s Traveller Site Fund

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has announced that nine councils, including Kent, Lancaster, Cornwall, Swindon, and Preston, will receive part of £10 million of funding through the DLUHC’s Traveller Site Fund. The funding is being provided so that councils can improve traveller sites across England so that travellers have authorised places to stay as well as access to facilities and services such as healthcare. Minister for Levelling Up, Dehenna Davison MP, said “We are supporting councils to improve travellers’ life chances and build cohesion between the settled and traveller communities. This funding is just one of the many ways we are improving opportunities for communities across the country, as part of the Levelling Up agenda.”

For more information please click here.

Regulatory

New powers from the Charities Act 2022 come into force

With effect from Wednesday 14 June, new powers under the Charities Act 2022 come into force. The new powers include:

• The ability for charities to spend, in certain circumstances, a proportion or all of their permanent endowment fund where the market value of the fund is (£25,000 or less) without Commission authorisation.
• The ability for charities to borrow, in certain circumstances, up to 25% of the value of their permanent endowment fund without Commission authorisation.
• That charities that have opted into a total return approach to investment to use permanent endowment to make social investments with a negative or uncertain financial return, provided any losses are offset by other gains.
• That the Commission can direct a charity to stop using a working name if it is too similar to another charity’s name or is offensive or misleading.
• That trustees now have discretion to decide how to advertise a proposed disposal of charity land and charities are no longer required to get Commission authority to grant a residential lease to a charity employee for a short periodic or fixed term tenancy.
• That the Commission can delay registration of a charity with an unsuitable name or delay entry of a new unsuitable name onto the Register of Charities. Working with the principal regulator, the Commission can also use these naming powers on exempt charities.

Aarti Thakor, Director of Legal & Accounting Services at the Charity Commission said “The latest changes introduced by the Charities Act 2022 give the charities we regulate more flexibility and greater powers. These are positive changes that will impact a significant number of charities, so it is important all organisations, big or small, take the time to check what this means for them. This is especially important if they are looking, for example, to dispose of land.”

For more information please click here.

Planning and housing

£150 million Ukrainian refugee housing fund announced

Local authorities are now able to access £150 million of government funding in order to help Ukrainian families into their own homes. The funding allocation will be divided according to the number of Ukrainians in each nation: £109 million for England, £30 million for Scotland, £8 million for Wales and around £2 million to Northern Ireland. It will help councils to support Ukrainian refugees into the private rental sector, help them get jobs, and continue sponsorship for guests’ second year in the UK, according to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Felicity Buchan said “The UK has an honourable tradition of offering shelter to those fleeing the horrors of war. Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of hosts in this country, over 124,000 Ukrainians have now found safety in the UK. Sadly, the fighting in Ukraine shows no sign of ending soon, so we are appealing for more people to become hosts while providing councils with this additional funding to support guests into long-term housing.”

For more information please click here.

Upcoming events

TechNExt Fringe Event: Why Wellbeing Matters

Ward Hadaway partner, Jamie Gamble, will be joined by Sheena Widdowfield and Lauren O’Connor from Opencast’s people team on Friday 23 June at Hoults Yard to discuss the benefits of focusing on employee wellbeing, the trends in expectations from people and employment law cases and highlighting the work Opencast has been doing in this space.

For more information please click here.

Contract law update with Professor Ewan McKendrick

Professor Ewan McKendrick KC will share with us the latest insights and case law on the following topics, a must for all in-house legal teams:

• Recent cases on the interpretation of contracts
• The drafting of exclusion clauses, termination clauses and force majeure clauses
• The meaning of an express term of the contract requiring parties to act in good faith
• Incorporation of terms into a contract
• Other topics include winning the battle of the forms, implied terms, the scope of the doctrine of duress and the role of estoppel and waiver in commercial transactions.

This event will take place in person at the Sage, Gateshead on 20 June 2023 at 9am.

For more information please click here.

Webinar series: Data Protection

Register your interest for our on-going webinar series on ‘Data Protection’ for in-house lawyers, DPOs and senior management in private and public sector organisations. The series will run throughout 2023 providing attendees with up to date information on key Data Protection topics. The short one hour sessions will be delivered by our experts with allocated time for you to ask any questions you may have. The next in our series ‘Data protection and the implications of AI tools’ will take place on 4 July 2023.

For more information or to book your place, please click here.

Transforming Workplace Health and Wellbeing

Ward Hadaway partner Jamie Gamble will be joined by a panel of experts on Tuesday 4th July between 8:30am – 12:30pm at the INNSiDE by Meliá Hotel who will provide valuable insight into how implementing focused Health and Wellbeing initiatives will help your workforce and in turn help you improve performance and productivity. We will also be joined by well-known regional employers who will share their own experiences of implementing Health and Wellbeing strategies in the workplace and the impact that they have had.

For more information or to book your place, please click here.

If you have any questions about the issues raised in this update, please do not hesitate to get in touch.