A Housing Ombudsman investigation into a housing association's failure to respond to a resident's request to deal with damp and mould in her home has uncovered two instances of severe maladministration.

Scarborough Borough Council is to take legal action in an £800,000 dispute over a local water park.

A three-way row has erupted between Norfolk Constabulary, the Broads Authority and a council leader over a planning decision affecting a river bank site.

Westminster City Council wrongly declared an asylum seeker intentionally homeless after she left a flat in Middlesbrough because of the activities of an intruder.

A community interest company’s case against a social landlord was “hopelessly muddled” and must be struck out, a judge has said.

Mr Justice Fraser has ordered a search of former Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock’s personal emails and social media apps.

Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council committed “egregious” failings in a child care case so bad that “a public judgment is appropriate to attempt to ensure that repetition of those failings is avoided”, HHJ Sharpe has said.

Four councils have been found by the High Court to have engaged in an abuse of process relating to injunctions against travellers and a fifth has been severely criticised in cases where they showed “complacency, even insouciance”.

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has made three statutory appointments to the board of a provider of social housing in Liverpool that was the subject of a strongly-critical regulatory notice.

A QC who specialises in child protection cases has joined 1 Crown Office Row in Brighton.

The Government is to introduce a new offence of interfering with the operation of key infrastructure – including motorways, railways, and airports – where the impact will affect the distribution of essential goods, such as fuel and medicine.

The Government has published new regulations and guidance setting out the level of support councils are required to provide to domestic abuse victims who need to escape home.

Browne Jacobson has appointed Charlotte Antoniou as a partner and the new head of its London education team.

Law firm Gowling WLG has advised the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and its regeneration and development company Be First on an agreement with Hackman Capital Partners (HCP) to build London's largest film and TV production centre in Dagenham.

The Government will overhaul the Human Rights Act in this Parliament, the Justice Secretary has said.

A team from law firm Bevan Brittan's London and Leeds offices has advised Worthing Borough Council on the £7m acquisition of a major town centre site.

People living in areas without a major city are particularly badly hit by “vanishing” availability of civil legal aid across housing, welfare, education, community care and immigration, the Law Society has claimed.

The LGiU thinktank has set out six principles that it believes should underpin the Government’s forthcoming Levelling Up White Paper.

A leading disability discrimination law firm, Fry Law, has gone into administration.

Jackie Weaver and a panel of comedians are to celebrate a year since the infamous Handforth Parish Council meeting went viral by forming “the ultimate council meeting” for a special live comedy event.

Anthony Collins Solicitors (ACS) has appointed Andrew Dudley, the head of housing at Wright Hassall, as a new partner to its social housing property team.

Liverpool City Council has appointed Daniel Fenwick, Director of Legal and Governance at the London Boroughs of Newham and Havering for the last six years, as its City Solicitor.

Devolution in England must extend not only to combined authorities but to local government as a whole, and to rural as well as urban areas, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has said.

The percentage of care or supervision cases to be disposed of within 26 weeks has reached its lowest level since 2012, government data has revealed.

The Housing Ombudsman has found severe maladministration in relation to a South East housing association’s complaint handling, after a resident waited seven years for repairs.

The Welsh Government expects discussions with the UK Government about the future of justice in Wales to begin shortly, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution Mick Antoniw MS has said.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, has appointed 40 Deputy High Court Judges, for a single fixed six-year term.

A judge has expressed concern about Ofsted’s intention to prosecute a non-registered children’s home in which a child deprived of liberty appears to be making progress.

Wales has issued the UK’s toughest planning guidance on development in flood zones, which will effectively bar new homes in these areas unless strong defences are provided.

A town councillor is trying to raise funds to take legal action over the proposed closure of an ambulance station in Evesham.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has said a gulf exists between what the public expects from adult social care and what it delivers, and the service is “progressively failing to deliver for those who need it most”.

Legal professionals are at high risk of burnout, mental ill-health and workplace bullying, harassment or discrimination, legal mental health charity LawCare has said.

A fifth new High Court judge – real property law specialist Edwin Johnson QC – has been appointed this month.

Cafcass last month extended the use of its prioritisation protocol for managing high workloads to the Greater Manchester area, it has emerged.

A High Court judge who last week refused to exercise the inherent jurisdiction to authorise the continued deprivation of the liberty of a 12-year-old child (LT) in an acute psychiatric admission unit for adolescents, has since authorised her deprivation of liberty in an empty children’s home found…

Law firm Bevan Brittan has bolstered its Construction Team with the appointment of two partners and two senior associates.

The parents of a 15-year-old pupil with special educational needs and disabilities have instructed lawyers to challenge the lawfulness of government guidance to schools on Covid-19 testing, arguing that it should be urgently revised to enable pupils with disabilities to take less intrusive saliva…

A High Court judge has declined to find that it was in the best interests of a 12-year-old girl (LT), who does not have a psychiatric condition requiring hospitalisation, to be deprived of her liberty on an acute psychiatric admission unit.

The Leader of Blackpool Council has accused the Home Office of acting “in a way that smacks of a deliberate move to frustrate the justice system”, after asylum seekers were placed in a local hotel ahead of a court hearing of the authority’s application for an injunction.

Helen Tucker, a partner in Anthony Collins Solicitors’ housing management team, has been appointed as a part-time deputy district judge (DDJ) for the Midlands Circuit.

The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an independent fostering agency over whether it is lawful for it only to accept heterosexual evangelical Christians as potential carers.

Given the speed and scale with which the Government needed to create new regulations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in future it needs to have the requisite tools in advance "to respond in a swift and proportionate manner that does not risk criminalising behaviour in ways incompatible with…

Barristers’ chambers Francis Taylor Building and law firm Poppleston Allen have published a 50-page report covering the COVID-19 related legislative changes which affected the hospitality sector, from the start of restrictions to Step 4 of the Roadmap and the full re-opening of hospitality in July…

A High Court judge has rejected an application by the London Borough of Hackney for a final injunction prohibiting a number of defendants until 13 September 2022 from engaging in various activities which were said to constitute anti-social behaviour and/or public nuisance in any public space in the…

The Cabinet Office has “not been enforcing the code for public appointments” in relation to arm’s length bodies (ALBs), the Public Accounts Committee has warned.

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames has agreed to pay more than £10,000 to a looked after child after an investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) found the quality of care he received impacted his education and relationship with his family.

Lessons learnt from emergency initiatives aimed at reducing rough sleeping during the pandemic need to be embedded in long-term policy, a group of cross-party politicians and experts from the health, housing, and homelessness sectors have told the Government.

A Deputy High Court judge has granted Ashford Borough Council a final anti-harassment injunction against a large-scale landlord who engaged in a campaign of “repetitive, frequent, oppressive and offensive correspondence”.

The Court of Appeal has warned against orders in childcare proceedings extending the time for making an application for permission to appeal by reference to the receipt of a transcript rather than by reference to a specific date.

Maldon District Council has warned a councillor who said he wanted to wear its censure letter to him as a hat.

Thanet District Council’s leader has taken the rare step of asking the Government to intervene to resolve its governance problems.

A First-Tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) case was not conducted unfairly despite an appellant and a witness having difficulty in hearing the online proceedings, the Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber has decided.

The Ministry of Justice has established an expert working group to seek ways to improve standards, reliability and security in electronic signatures and other means of legally executing documents.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has accepted that he must redetermine the Stonehenge road tunnel project after his High Court defeat last month.

A personal injury and clinical negligence specialist has been appointed a High Court Judge, the fourth new justice to be unveiled this month.

The Court of Appeal has given the go-ahead for a judicial review of West Sussex County Council's decision to remove a cycle lane installed during the pandemic.

The Welsh Government has launched a new programme to simplify planning and historic environment law, as part of a long-term plan to create Codes of Welsh law.

A council has failed in an appeal over a judge’s decision that a personal injury claimant had not been fundamentally dishonest in relation to his claim.

A property owner in London who built a number of extensions and converted them into seven flats and two bedsits, all without planning permission, has been ordered to pay more than £144,000.

The Court of Appeal will next week hear an appeal by a defendant found in contempt of court for failing to demolish a leisure building housing a cinema and bowling alley that he was ordered to take down in 2018.