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R (Greyhound Board of Great Britain Ltd) v Welsh Ministers [2026] EWHC 670 (Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling reinforces the constitutional divide between the courts and the legislature. It explains that the scheme and framework of the Government of Wales Act 2006 (GWA 2006) embody that separation of powers, and that any judicial attempt to recognise and enforce a common law obligation on Welsh Ministers to consult prior to introducing legislation in the Senedd would trespass upon that boundary. This is not a departure from established principle; case law has already upheld comparable rules for lawmakers in Scotland and at Westminster. However, this is the first express confirmation of the position for Welsh lawmakers, and the first time this dimension of the GWA 2006 has been analysed in such depth. The court examined earlier
The solution arrived through the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), a quasi‑judicial body handling mass claims, created under UN Security Council Resolution 687. By addressing environmental harm—most notably via its ‘F4’ claim class—the UNCC set a seminal benchmark shaping how international law and contemporary arbitral panels allocate financial responsibility for wartime ecological devastation. With present-day wars in areas such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East bringing dam breaches, strikes on chemical facilities, and the burning of farmland, the UNCC’s legacy endures as an essential reference point for states, global investors, and companies engaged in post‑conflict arbitration. The F4 claims: Quantifying the unquantifiable Prior to the 1990s, mechanisms in international law for war reparations overwhelmingly favoured property loss, foregone earnings, and bodily injury. The natural world was commonly treated as a mute, non-compensable victim of armed hostilities...
Understanding the farming business as a business Many farms still use long-standing structures that arose by habit, not strategy. Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common. While once effective, such setups can cause major issues around succession, tax planning and involving the next generation. A corporate team can take a fresh, business-led view of the farm, asking: Who owns the land and other critical assets? Who manages daily operations? Who carries the risk and who enjoys the return? What is the enduring plan for succession? From this review, the team can confirm whether the current setup is fit for purpose or if an alternative — for example an updated partnership agreement, a company, a limited liability partnership, or a blended model — would better meet the family’s aims. Tax efficiency through joined-up advice Tax sits at the centre of most
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According to court filings by Ariel Armon, an acquitted defendant, dated 24 April 2026 and only released on 22 May 2026, an expert witness engaged by the SFO to support its bribery and corruption investigation enlisted a public official to channel improper payments to other officials in order to secure information and materials for the SFO’s inquiry. In February 2026, the SFO halted its case against Graeme Hossie, the former chief executive of London Mining, Rachel Rhodes, its ex-chief financial officer, and Armon, a former consultant. The agency has rejected any suggestion of misconduct. The trio had been charged by the SFO in June 2023 with conspiring to pay bribes to state officials and intermediaries to advance London Mining’s interests in Sierra Leone. Hossie, Rhodes, and Armon were scheduled for trial in April 2026. However, the SFO discontinued the...
New tool for sentencers in the Crown Court The Sentencing Council has released a streamlined edition of the Sentencing ACE tool, created to assist sentencers in the Crown Court in identifying the relevant statutory provisions and sentencing guidelines when passing sentence for an offence. Access the tool here......
In this issue: Criminal liability Criminal procedure and evidence Proceeds of crime Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Fraud, forgery, tax and theft offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Insolvency offences and Companies Act offences Local authority prosecutions International Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Criminal liability Corporate criminal liability expansion-the Crime and Policing Act 2026 The Crime and Policing Act 2026 ( CPA 2026) has now secured Royal Assent, heralding a substantial reset of corporate criminal liability in the UK. By broadening attribution through a widened ‘senior manager’ test, it steps away from the restrictive bounds of the traditional identification principle. From 29 June 2026, corporate criminal exposure will depend not on fixing misconduct to the board or the most senior executives, but on the real-world allocation and exercise of decision-making authority throughout the...
The Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) has released the results of a review evaluating financial services firms’ frameworks and controls relating to financial and trade sanctions. The publication sets out illustrations of effective and weak practice, plus development priorities, to support firms in meeting sanctions legislation. According to FCA, firms have advanced in avoiding sanctions breaches, yet deficiencies persist......
Section 6 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 supersedes VPA 2024, s 17, scrapping the prior constraint that protected disclosures had to be made to particular recipients for specified purposes. Any term in any agreement, including commercial non-disclosure agreements ( NDAs), is void to the extent it seeks to stop a victim, or someone who reasonably believes they are a victim, from revealing relevant criminal conduct-or the counterparty’s reaction to it-to anyone, for any purpose. The new provision binds the Crown, subject only to a tightly drawn national security exception. This analysis examines how these reforms align with existing common law limits on confidentiality and their consequences for standard commercial NDA templates. It is written by Richard Hanstock, a barrister at Cornerstone Barristers and the founder of Deeptech Legal, an SRA-authorised firm specialising in cybersecurity, artificial...
A round-up of the latest health and safety prosecutions, featuring an oil and gas operator fined after a worker sustained severe burns from a violent propane release, and a waste and recycling firm fined after an employee was killed by a reversing telehandler... Firms/persons prosecuted : Shell UK Limited Background : In the early hours of 1 November 2018, Vladimir Volkov, a gas engineer on the tanker MV Symi, suffered cold burns to 10–13% of his body when liquid propane escaped without warning during loading operations at Shell’s Braefoot Bay Marine Terminal near Dalgety Bay, Fife. The escape was initiated when a Shell technician inadvertently pressed a button on a remote-control handset, causing a loading arm quick-release coupling to detach from the ship’s manifold before the arm had been fully cleared of propane......
A round-up of the latest health and safety prosecutions including a machinery manufacturing company penalised after a worker’s fingers were crushed during a lifting operation......
A summary of the latest environmental enforcement activity, highlighting a case where a recycling company is prosecuted for three attempts to unlawfully export plastic waste polluted with household refuse and electrical items... Firm/persons: MV Recycling ( UK) Ltd and Noormohammed Master Background: MV Recycling ( UK) Ltd, a Lancashire-based recycling firm, made three separate attempts in 2019 to export plastic materials to Turkey that were heavily contaminated with household waste-including sanitary products, nappies, and electrical goods......
A round-up of the latest trading standards prosecutions, including a criminal network sentenced for laundering more than £331,000 obtained through rogue trader frauds linked to doorstep building works. Prosecuted parties Lee Cross Sorisa Richardson Zoe Hoskyn Jason Walker Pauline Walker Background From February to September 2019, offenders active across Surrey, Essex and London pushed victims into handing over substantial sums for needless or shoddy building works......
CPA 2026 materially widens corporate criminal exposure by extending attribution for all offences to conduct by ‘senior managers’ exercising significant decision-making power. This moves risk beyond the narrow ‘directing mind’ test and brings companies-particularly large, decentralised groups-under sharper enforcement scrutiny. Expect prosecutors to probe operational leadership, governance gaps and aggregate evidence across individuals. Boards should revisit delegation, clarify accountability and reinforce oversight of operational choices. A continuing hurdle is pinpointing who is a senior manager in complex structures, with courts likely to prioritise substance over form. More broadly, the regime will reshape how organisations record authority, decisions and escalation, with greater emphasis on demonstrating how choices are taken and supervised in practice. A reshaped strategic risk profile The most immediate effect of CPA 2026 is a broader range of situations in which a company can be criminally liable. Historically, attribution turned on the...
OFSI General licence INT/2024/4761108 The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation ( OFSI) has revised General Licence INT/2024/4761108. The update: Introduces a fresh definition of ‘cryptoasset’, meaning a cryptographically secured digital expression of value or contractual rights that relies on a form of distributed ledger technology and is capable of being transferred, stored, or traded electronically Adds a new obligation to report for any person using cryptoassets to send or receive a payment under the General Licence The updated licence is available here. Source: OFSI General licence INT/2024/4761108......
In this issue: Criminal procedure and evidence Sentencing Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Consumer protection and cartels Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Financial services and pensions offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Money laundering Other corporate crime news Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Criminal procedure and evidence HMCTS launches research on AI to improve victims’ access to faster court transcript services HM Courts and Tribunals Service ( HMCTS) has unveiled a pilot examining the use of artificial intelligence ( AI) to produce transcripts of court hearings. The project will evaluate whether the Ministry of Justice ( Mo J)’s own tool, Justice Transcribe, attains necessary accuracy thresholds whilst markedly cutting turnaround times and costs when set against existing contracted suppliers for Crown Court cases. The programme’s objectives are to lower transcript charges, boost openness and provide swifter access to court records, thereby enhancing victims’...
What is the key regulatory update from the CMA’s press release on fake and misleading consumer reviews? On Friday 27 March 2026, the CMA revealed it has begun consumer protection enforcement against five UK firms over fake and deceptive online reviews, signalling one of the first deployments of its new powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 ( DMCCA 2024), in this area of consumer protection and online reviews enforcement. The probe currently covers Autotrader, Feefo, Dignity, Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists—covering the car sales, funerals and food delivery industries. At present, the CMA has not determined whether consumer law has been infringed. Under the DMCCA 2024, fabricated and misleading reviews are treated as an automatically unfair commercial practice. Responsibilities do not rest only with companies that solicit or reward reviews; they also apply to those that publish, host or...
The Upper Tribunal has dismissed Stephen Grant Forster's application to overturn the ban imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA). On 7 April 2026, the panel determined that harassment by a stalker and serious health issues did not excuse, or diminish, non-adherence to his regulatory obligations. In its written reasons, it found the penalty to be a measured and proportionate reaction to his 'complete and persistent non-compliance'. The decision records, in clear terms, that it fully accepts the FCA's submissions that personal difficulties, even grave ones, cannot explain the complete failure to file even a single return over such a prolonged period, particularly where the FCA repeatedly sought to enable compliance and limited its requests to the most recent set of returns. Forster had been advising clients as a sole trader trading as Premier Research and Marketing since the 1990s,...
In this issue Criminal procedure and evidence Appeal and judicial review Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Fraud, forgery, tax and theft offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Criminal procedure and evidence Criminal Procedure Rule changes now in force The Criminal Procedure Rule Committee ( CPRC) and the Ministry of Justice ( Mo J) confirm that amendments to the Criminal Procedure Rules ( Crim PR), set out in the Criminal Procedure ( Amendment) Rules 2026, SI 2026/47, took effect on 6 April 2026. The Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 and Practice Directions page has been refreshed to reflect the revisions. For an in-depth summary of the changes, consult Practice Note: Criminal Procedure Rules ( Crim...
Senior Costs Judge Jason Rowley held in the High Court that the mining company was entitled to inspect the terms AM Strachan & Co struck with Puddick when the firm agreed to act for him in claims about alleged media leaks. ENRC struck a settlement agreement with the SFO, Puddick and John Gibson, an ex-prosecutor at the agency and now a partner at Cohen & Gresser, in October 2024. As part of that deal, ENRC agreed to cover Puddick's own legal costs. ' The law is clear,' said Judge Rowley in an oral ruling. Retainer paperwork is simply not privileged. ' They record terms of agreement, not advice,' the judge added. Nicholas Bacon KC of 4 New Square argued on behalf......
In February 2026, the SFO stated it was re-examining a further 20 in total of its past cases owing to concerns regarding its legacy software utilised for the disclosure of evidence within prosecutions. The authority said it had identified additional faults with its former ‘e-discovery’ platform, Autonomy, during a review into issues that first surfaced in 2022, which triggered the collapse of a prominent prosecution of Serco executives. A report by Global Investigations Review ( GIR) on 27 March 2026 asserted that the SFO had handed over previously unshared material to an unnamed convicted individual arising from an SFO case......
In this issue: Criminal procedure and evidence Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Appeal and judicial review Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Consumer protection and cartels Environmental offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Food safety and hygiene offences International Lex Talk®Corporate Crime: a Lexis®Nexis community Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Criminal procedure and evidence Bar Council responds to government criminal justice reforms in favour of specialist courts The Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association ( CBA) are pressing ministers to honour fully the 2024 Labour manifesto commitment by creating dedicated sexual and domestic abuse courts at every Crown Court across England and Wales. They contend this route is better than curbing jury trials as a way to...
This measure, a lightly revised iteration of the Criminal Division’s long-standing counterpart, extends to all corporate criminal cases save those implicating antitrust breaches. It displaces every US Attorney’s Office and component-specific corporate enforcement policy now in force, except for the Antitrust Division’s leniency framework. It lands just a fortnight after the US Attorney’s Office for the SDNY unveiled its own corporate enforcement programme tailored to financial crimes. That programme diverged in multiple substantive respects—many more advantageous to self-reporting companies—from the department’s traditional handling of corporate enforcement. Below we outline the new policy and consider its likely impact across the DOJ generally and the SDNY programme in particular. Criminal Division’s policy goes national The department-wide framework largely mirrors the Criminal Division’s approach. Announcing the new policy, Assistant Attorney General A Tysen Duva observed that the ‘division has a long and storied history of corporate...
Simms- Davies v Southwark Crown Court [2026] EWHC 337 ( Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The decision confirms that sanctioning a DPA is a judicial exercise that attracts the open justice principle, as freshly reaffirmed by the Divisional Court in R ( Marandi) v Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2023] 2 Cr App R 215 at [43]. The presumption is that the rulings endorsing DPAs can name people who are pertinent to the court’s analysis. Granting anonymity is a rare departure from that norm. It requires persuasive, specific evidence showing it is required to shield a person from interference with their Convention or other common law rights. Treating anonymity as distinct from reporting restrictions makes no difference to that legal standard: both sit within the open justice framework. What was the background? Two construction companies, Bluu Solutions Ltd ( Bluu) and Tetris- Projects Ltd (...
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When evaluating a general damages claim, the practitioner ought initially to refer to the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG)...
This Practice Note This Practice Note reviews mechanisms used in settling litigation. A Tomlin order consists of a consent order paired with a schedule. It operates to stay proceedings on terms that have been agreed. The provisions contained in the schedule may remain confidential. This Practice Note describes the scope of confidentiality attaching to the schedule and sets out how it differs from a standard consent order. Sample wording for a Tomlin order is included, alongside links to precedents, as well as guidance on court approval. It also addresses varying, setting aside and enforcing a Tomlin order, including the considerations the court will take into account when handling applications for each. Further guidance is provided on interpreting and applying the relevant provisions of the CPR; however, some courts and divisions impose very specific requirements for both drafting and approval, and for approaching the schedule and confidentiality issues. Accordingly, you must consider the particular rules and court guide provisions in the forum where your claim is proceeding when drawing up the Tomlin order...
Date [ date ] Parties [ name of Landlord ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Landlord) [ name of Tenant ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Tenant) [ [ name of Guarantor ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Guarantor) ] [ [ name of Mortgagee ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Mortgagee) ] Definitions Within this Deed, the terms below shall be interpreted as follows: [ Annual Rent • the annual sum reserved under the Lease; ] [ Insurance Rent • the Tenant’s share of the Landlord’s costs of insuring the Property (as set out in the Lease); ] Lease • the lease of the Property dated [ date ], entered into between (1) [ the Landlord OR [ name ...
I, [ name ], of [ address ], solemnly and sincerely state that: [ Matters to be verified, set out in numbered paragraphs ] I make this solemn statement in good conscience, believing it to be true, and pursuant to the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1835. DECLARED at [ details ] this [ day ] day of [ month and year ] Before me ................................................................................ [ signature of the person before whom the declaration is made ] A [ commissioner for oaths OR [ solicitor OR [ insert other qualification ] ] authorised to administer oaths ]...
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