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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 Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common.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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What is the purpose of, and key provisions of, these Regulations? Created under the Building Safety Act 2022 ( BSA 2022) as a central pillar of its reform of the building safety system, the Building Safety Regulator ( BSR) was initially housed within the Health and Safety Executive ( HSE), conferring significant new duties over the safety and performance of all buildings, irrespective of height. The BSR’s remit is extensive and includes, among other things, monitoring the effectiveness and performance of the building control profession, advising on revisions to procedural elements and functional requirements within the building regulations, and raising the competence of everyone engaged in the construction sector. The BSR acts as the building control authority for higher-risk buildings and serves as the safety regulator for occupied buildings. In June 2025, the government announced reforms to the BSR, including...
Introduction by Guy Wilkes, partner and Lexis+ Consulting Editorial Board member Welcome to Mishcon de Reya’s Enforcement Watch, our triannual survey of enforcement activity and what lies ahead. Over the past four months, the FCA has flexed its enforcement muscle. The standout case: a £44 million fine for Nationwide over AML systems failings. Familiar issues, yet a sanction that spotlights supervisory priorities. Once more, the FCA applied a proportionality adjustment without explaining its method. The regulator is also broadening use of criminal powers, achieving its first data protection prosecution while sustaining pressure on insider dealing. Two notable disclosure rulings – on cross‑border confidentiality duties and collateral use of materials in Tribunal proceedings – carry significant implications for firms under scrutiny. Looking forward, the FCA’s December plans for comprehensive cryptoasset rules (effective 2027) signal a fundamental shift, and final guidance on...
In this issue: Investigating criminal conduct Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Criminal procedure and evidence Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Investigating criminal conduct Policing reimagined—structural reform, centralisation and the rise of AI The Police Reform White Paper, issued in January 2026, maps out seven strands of change. Together, these proposals reshape the overall make-up of police services across the UK, raise expected policing standards, and enhance officer welfare and efficiency. Bianca Brasoveanu of Mountford Chambers reviews how the plans seek to refine intelligence-sharing, rebuild public trust, reinforce neighbourhood policing, and promote officer wellbeing. She also warns of...
Key findings Although his conclusions are spread across 11 chapters and more than 700 pages, the backdrop to both the Efficiency Review and the Policy Review is a criminal justice system in a crisis of such scale and urgency that it cannot be fixed within current resources. Sir Brian depicts a service gravely short of capacity, from frontline practitioners and wider staff to a court estate blighted by chronic underinvestment, carrying a £1.3bn maintenance backlog, with premises ill-suited to contemporary needs. Digitisation sits at the heart of Sir Brian’s plan. AI is cast as essential to boosting efficiency throughout the system, and, on remote participation, he notes clear scope for far wider use. Main recommendations AI Sir Brian urges the adoption of AI, particularly to raise efficiency, aid decision-making, and modernise listing and case-management systems. Steering clear of naming specific platforms, he instead outlines...
Analysis of the main reforms National Police Service The Police Reform White Paper proposes a single service, formed by consolidating the numerous national bodies that have worked in specialist arenas to date, such as the National Crime Agency and Counter Terrorism Policing. An appointed National Police Commissioner will lead the National Police Service, serving as the country’s most senior police officer. Bringing these units together is intended to free unspecialised officers to focus locally on supporting victims, while forensic and other technical enquiries will fall to specialist personnel within the same unified organisation. The infusion of technology, pooled intelligence, and advanced training and experience across the national service should undeniably raise standards in policing, from everyday offences to the most serious crimes. A single structure is expected to cut through bureaucratic barriers created by former administrative borders, enabling faster, more thorough...
In 2019, Güralp Systems was ordered to hand over in excess of £2m to resolve claims of bribery in South Korea. It avoided a criminal case through a deferred prosecution agreement ( DPA) reached with the SFO. However, the business, which has experienced financial strain, has not settled the sanction set out in the DPA, which ran for five years. This is thought to be the first instance of a company being accused of not complying with a DPA’s conditions. Güralp Systems argued the SFO 'slipped up' by failing to notify the court of the supposed breach of the deal by its October 2024 expiry date in full......
In this issue: Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Financial services and pensions offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Local authority prosecutions Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Latest Q& A Useful information Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Güralp Systems loses bid to escalate plea deal challenge to UK Supreme Court Güralp Systems has failed in its effort to refer a ruling that upholds a UK bribery plea agreement to the Supreme Court, and now faces the Serious Fraud Office ( SFO) moving the court to enforce the deal. The attempt to escalate the dispute has therefore been rejected at this stage, leaving the agreement capable of being...
Article A New Vision for Water ( January 2026): regulatory consolidation, planning reform, and the re-settlement of environmental accountability in England Introduction: a White Paper drafted in the language of constitutional correction The Government’s White Paper, A New Vision for Water ( January 2026, CP 1490), is most aptly read as an attempt to refound the legal and institutional order for England’s water sector. Its central refrain is not that the present system needs minor adjustment, but that it is structurally unsound. The charges are well known, but are cast here in expressly juridical terms: splintered mandates and misaligned incentives; duplicative and burdensome planning obligations; insufficient transparency; weak consumer protection; a delivery model that fails to convert public policy into performance at the scale now required by environmental deterioration, climate volatility, and population...
In this issue: Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Criminal procedure and evidence Proceeds of crime Appeals and judicial review Sentencing Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Cybercrime and data protection offences Fraud, forgery, tax and theft offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Other corporate crime updates Lex Talk®Corporate Crime: a Lexis®Nexis community Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Deferred Prosecution Agreements—an ‘expiry date’ or a ‘best before’? ( Guralp Systems Ltd v Serious Fraud Office) The statutory framework for Deferred Prosecution Agreements ( DPAs) requires an expiry date within every DPA, mandates that any breach application is made while the DPA remains in force, and provides that where a DPA lasts...
In this issue: Investigating criminal conduct Criminal procedure and evidence Proceeds of crime Sentencing Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Consumer protection and cartels Fraud, forgery, tax and theft offences Food safety and hygiene offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Insolvency offences and Companies Act offences Local authority prosecutions Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Investigating criminal conduct Home Office white paper proposes structural policing reforms and new ministerial powers The Home Office has unveiled proposals for the most sweeping redesign of policing in England and Wales since the service was professionalised two hundred years ago. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has issued a white paper that sets out potential mergers of forces and the...
In this issue: Investigating criminal conduct Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Sentencing Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Cybercrime and data protection offences Environmental offences Financial services and pensions offences Food safety and hygiene 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 Investigating criminal conduct Whistleblowing in the UK— Still a long road ahead Rahman Ravelli’s legal director, Dr Angelika Hellweger, together with associate, Tatiana Novikova, examine how the UK handles whistleblowing. They map out the present UK statutory position and other relevant mechanisms, assess the scope of the safeguards they afford, and set these against the options open to whistleblowers in the United States of America. They also describe the HM Revenue and Customs ( HMRC) whistleblower reward initiative announced near the end of 2025, contrasting it with US whistleblower protections. Their review ends by...
Following a disorderly 2025—marked by shifting rules and unproven legal theories—2026 looks marginally more predictable, though no less tough. Businesses should anticipate ongoing growth in disputes, from greenwashing class actions to state‑led consumer protection cases. A fragmented regulatory scene—a tug‑of‑war between US federal and state authorities, alongside indecision within the European Union—will keep compliance complex for multinational companies. Greenwashing risk shifting from regulation to litigation Where we are For at least a decade, companies have encountered rising exposure from government enforcement and private actions over ‘greenwashing’—overstated or misleading claims about environmental benefits tied to products or corporate behaviour. Attempts on both sides of the Atlantic to toughen the rules—an update to the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides and the draft EU Green Claims Directive—have stalled. Meanwhile, consumer‑centred litigation is accelerating. Recently, firms across technology, food, fashion, airlines and other sectors have been hit with class actions...
Shifts in policy, supervisory strategies and priorities, newly regulated activities drawing more firms within the regulatory perimeter, further rewrites of EU‑derived rules after Brexit, and sector‑specific adjustments—we’ve witnessed the lot. The job for firms now is to map how to handle the changes and challenges that 2026 will deliver. In this piece, we set out the detail of five changes already scheduled for fixed dates in 2026, and we also flag five others that remain in development, but which we expect to move forward significantly during 2026... Targeted support: April 2026 In July 2025, HM Treasury outlined a new regime for targeted support. This service would become a stand‑alone regulated activity under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 ( FSMA), made possible by amendments to the FSMA ( Regulated Activities) Order 2001. Providing investment advice is a...
The UK’s limited approach to whistleblowing Although the UK officially brought in whistleblower protections in 1998, it has, like many European jurisdictions, traditionally been hesitant to reward whistleblowers. Stakeholders have raised worries about malicious or bad-faith reports, the exposure of whistleblowers under cross-examination, the possibility of criminal investigation where they are implicated in the disclosed conduct and, more broadly, the belief that disclosures should rest on moral rather than monetary motives. In practice, the principal deterrents to reporting misconduct are the absence of financial incentives and certainty. Prospective whistleblowers in senior roles or specialist fields may fear enduring career harm and consequent financial hardship if they speak up, particularly where robust and adequate (financial) safeguards are lacking. Current UK legislation The cornerstone statute on whistleblowing is the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which modified the Employment Rights Act 1996. Its purpose is to shield workers from...
Güralp’s UK deferred prosecution agreement ( DPA) Güralp became the sixth business to secure a UK deferred prosecution agreement ( DPA), agreeing to pay more than £2m to resolve bribery allegations connected to South Korea. The five-year DPA allowed it to avoid criminal prosecution. Within this framework, firms generally pay penalties instead of facing prosecution and pledge to comply with the agreement’s conditions. If those conditions are broken, the company can be prosecuted for the original offence. In November 2024, the SFO said Güralp had breached the settlement’s terms by failing to pay the penalty by the end of the DPA on 22 October 2024, citing financial difficulties, partly stemming from the coronavirus ( COVID-19) pandemic......
This article examines how both regimes developed through 2025—tracking the EU's first full year under the Markets in Cryptoassets Regulation, or Mi CAR, the UK move towards implementation of its cryptoasset regime, and where the two frameworks are beginning to converge and diverge. We also look ahead to the supervisory trajectory for 2026 and conclude with practical takeaways for legal teams handling structuring, documentation and cross-border execution risk. Following Mi CAR’s entry into legal application at the end of 2024, 2025 marked the first operational year of the EU regime. Member state authorities continued to process authorisation submissions, with key technical standards and implementing measures moving towards full effect, and transitional arrangements expected to continue into mid‑2026. In the UK, the statutory perimeter for the future cryptoasset regime has reached its final legislative form, with the government having laid the regulations before Parliament on 15...
In this issue A review of key cases in 2025 Decision to prosecute and alternatives to prosecution Criminal procedure and evidence Proceeds of crime Bribery, corruption, sanctions and export controls Environmental offences Financial services and pensions offences Health and safety and corporate manslaughter offences Local authority prosecutions Money laundering Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information A review of key cases in 2025 Headline corporate crime matters in 2025 included the UK Supreme Court overturning the convictions of two traders jailed for rate manipulation; the anti-fraud agency deploying a seldom‑used legal power to recover criminal cash; and the first conviction for sanctions breaches. See News Analysis: The biggest financial crime cases of 2025. Decision to prosecute and...
We outline the FCA’s key messages from 2025, alongside predictions and practical tips to help you stay on the right side of the FCA in 2026. Fewer, faster investigations A refreshed stance on enforcement has been anticipated since Therese Chambers and Steve Smart assumed leadership of the FCA’s enforcement division in 2023, and the June 2025 update to the FCA Enforcement Guide made it official. The policy statement released with the revised guide confirmed that the FCA has raised the threshold, effectively raising the bar, for commencing an investigation and bolstered its pre-investigation assessment procedures. Addressing the City & Financial Global FCA Investigations and Enforcement Summit in October 2025, Therese Chambers, the FCA’s Joint Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight, underscored the point, stating the FCA is running fewer investigations, at a faster pace. This reflects a 2025 objective to shrink the open caseload and bring...
Historical and constitutional foundations of jury trial Clause 39 of Magna Carta [1215] stated that no free person could be jailed, deprived of possessions, or ruined ‘except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land’, planting the central principle that liberty cannot be removed without collective adjudication. Modern writers interpret this as the seed of the jury ideal—the phrase ‘of his peers’ maturing into the belief that grave criminal culpability should be assessed not solely by the Crown’s judiciary but by ordinary citizens. The jury is thus seen as the institutional heir to Magna Carta’s assurance that the King and his agents stand subject to the law. This ancestry underpins the view that limiting jury trial is not simply a procedural tweak but a possible intrusion upon a centuries‑old balance of authority between individual and state. As Lord Devlin...
Additionally, one espionage case involving service to foreign states ended in a win for prosecutors, while a sister trial proved humiliating; one of the nation’s largest money‑laundering actions saw a socialite, alleged to be central to the plot, cleared; and the UK’s highest court stopped an extradition for insider trading in a move that bucked precedent. Here, Law360 unpacks the year’s most significant financial crime cases... UK Supreme Court quashes Libor convictions In R v Hayes; R v Palombo [2025] UKSC 29, Britain’s top court in July 2025 overturned the convictions of traders Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo for conspiring to manipulate benchmark interest rates. The pair had been found guilty of rigging the London interbank offered rate ( Libor) and its euro‑denominated counterpart after separate trials following the 2008 financial crash. The justices ruled the verdicts unsafe, holding that the trial judges...
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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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