Legal News

Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v KP (by her litigation friend the Official Solicitor) [2025] EWCOP 35 What was the background? KP is a bright 19-year-old who is now 17 weeks pregnant at this time. She experienced hypoxia at birth, resulting in an acquired brain injury, and has a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. In 2024 a psychiatrist assessed her as showing traits of Borderline Personality Disorder, and later the same year she was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Although KP has not been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, she is known to present with several distinct personas or identities that take hold for different periods; at present, she adopts the identity of a 13-year-old girl. Around April 2025 it was concluded that KP should be presumed to have capacity to engage in sexual relations. KP met a man, CD, online; they started a...

Asset Management & Investment Funds: Irish practice developments— October 2025 Some annual compliance deadlines 31 December 2025—individual accountability framework: Regulated Financial Service Providers ( RFSPs) should deliver suitable, continuing training so individuals fully understand their responsibilities regarding the Conduct Standards and precisely what is required within their roles. Firms should be able to demonstrate that each person has completed the relevant training and keep records up to date. 31 December 2025—corporate governance: By year-end, complete the 2025 evaluations of board and individual director performance, and the schedule of matters reserved to the board. A formal, documented review, including an appraisal of the chairperson, must take place once every three years. At least annually, assess directors’ time commitments and confirmation of other directorships, adherence to procedures for managing conflicts of interest, and the terms of reference of any board...

Mergers Notifications received for: New Princes/ Carrefour Italia ( M.12121) under the normal procedure; and Tata Motors/ Iveco Group ( M.12138), Hartree/ ED& F Man Chile ( M.12149), Amphenol/ Commscope ( Connectivity and Cable Solutions) ( M.12173) plus KKR/ Cinven/ CVC/ Nemean Midco ( M.12191) under the simplified procedure. Clearances covered: Ferrero Group’s acquisition of sole control of CPK SAS ( M.12086); a joint venture by EVH Grüne Energie – Beteiligung Gmb H & Co. KG and HSBC Alternative Investments S. C. A. SICAV- RAIF ( M.12128); joint control of Heroiks SAS by LBO France Gestion SAS and EMZ Partners SAS ( M.12167); and joint control of Vinventions Holding S.à r.l. by L- GAM II SCSp and Hayfin Capital Management LLP ( M.12171), each following a phase I investigation—see Midday Express. State aid The Commission approved, under EU State aid rules, a French scheme...

What is the background to the consultation? On 13 October 2025, Alison Mc Govern, Minister of State for Local Government and Homelessness, told the House of Commons that the government was formally opening a consultation on proposed policy changes to the LGPS in England and Wales. This exercise follows major updates to the scheme’s investment and governance framework and rules that were announced earlier this year. What is being proposed and why? Within the consultation, four core policy themes are being examined in detail at present. First, the NMPA. Under the Finance Act 2022, the NMPA for the majority of registered pension schemes is scheduled to rise from age 55 to age 57, taking effect from 6 April 2028......

Mergers Greencore/ Bakkavor meets the test for reference to phase 2 The CMA has issued a decision concluding that the anticipated acquisition of Bakkavor Group plc ( Bakkavor) by Greencore Group plc ( Greencore) meets the threshold for a phase 2 reference. Greencore operates as a producer, supplier and distributor of food, with its principal business dedicated to the production and supply of convenience foods within the UK. Bakkavor is a multinational producer and supplier of fresh prepared foods, with activities spanning the UK, Ireland and the United States......

Save Greater Manchester Green Belt Ltd v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and others [2025] EWHC 2742 ( Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? For plan-makers, the court emphasises that identifying ‘exceptional circumstances’ to amend Green Belt boundaries is a wide policy notion entrusted to planning judgment; it is not limited to a ‘fundamental change’ or to smoothing out ‘boundary anomalies’. Inspectors and LPAs may lawfully set criteria to structure that judgment, but those criteria cannot be treated as inflexible legal preconditions: decision-makers must still balance all pertinent Green Belt considerations and set out why the evidence ‘fully evidences and justifies’ alteration. In practice, authorities promoting Green Belt extensions or releases may draw on a combination of site-specific factors—provided the examination record demonstrates the broader policy balance has been undertaken and not unduly narrowed. Objectors and...

R (on the application of SK) v Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (transcript) [2025] EWHC 2186 ( Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The application concerned interim relief and whether SK had shown a strong arguable case. The distressing background appears highly atypical. Consequently, the practical ramifications are likely to be limited. Even so, the ruling offers persuasive guidance on the character of the main housing duty under HA 1996, s 193(2), and on whether accommodation can become unsuitable because of a temporary alteration in the applicant’s household circumstances. Judicial review is a last-resort remedy; a claimant will not be permitted to bring judicial review where an adequate alternative remedy is available, save in exceptional situations. This judgment might be taken to demonstrate how hard it is to establish such exceptional circumstances. As the judge...

Altrad Investment Authority SAS and others v Protopapas and others [2025] EWHC 2470 ( Ch) What was the background? This dispute centred on Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd ( CIHL), an English company that previously engaged in asbestos extraction and is now within the Altrad group. In 2021, a claim was brought in South Carolina by Ms Isabella Park against numerous defendants including Cape Plc, and CIHL was later joined as a defendant in November 2021. On 6 March 2023, an application for receivership was submitted to appoint a receiver over CIHL, predicated on the alleged US presence and activities of North American Asbestos Corporation ( NAAC), a dissolved CIHL subsidiary. The receivership order was granted on 16 March 2023 without a hearing, naming Mr Peter Protopapas as receiver. In reliance on that order, Mr Protopapas brought third‑party proceedings in June 2023 within distinct South...

In its biannual report, the FCA said that banking and credit card issues were the biggest contributor to the rise, with close to 900,000 complaints, representing a 7.2% uplift on H2 2024. The FCA also noted that complaints about pensions and the withdrawal of retirement funds increased by 5.5% between January and June 2025 to 94,000, up from 89,100 in H2 2024. Investment-related complaints advanced by a little over 10% to 58,300, compared with 53,000 previously. The FCA said the figures are used to evaluate how firms treat their customers and to track changes in their performance over time......

Asset Management & Investment Funds: EU & international developments— October 2025 SIU The European Commission published two significant policy initiatives to advance the SIU, specifically to improve financial literacy and to expand investment opportunities available to EU citizens across the Union. Savings and investments accounts ( SIAs) Through its recommendation, the Commission presents Member States with a comprehensive European blueprint for SIAs, drawing on existing and established best practices. It urges Member States to establish SIAs where they do not yet exist, and to strengthen and enhance current frameworks by embedding leading practices from across Europe and worldwide......

What is the background to the proposals? London’s housing delivery has dropped markedly, owing to higher interest rates, surging build costs, and regulatory obstacles. The joint package seeks to unlock stalled projects and rebuild confidence in the development pipeline. It offers a time-limited uplift to viability by reducing fixed costs and easing inflexible design requirements, while protecting affordable housing provision. It also signals a wider national move towards clearer, more consistent planning rules with less duplication between borough and strategic policy tiers. What are the key proposals? The package combines financial relief, policy flexibility and additional powers for the Mayor—each intended to make it easier to bring schemes forward. CIL relief: The headline step is a temporary 50% reduction in borough-level CIL for eligible brownfield housing schemes that include at least 20% affordable housing. The reduction would not apply to Mayoral CIL, nor to student or...

Mergers CMA issues interim report in Aramark/ Entier merger in phase 2 investigation; provisionally finds competition concerns The CMA has published its interim report and interim report notice on the completed purchase by Aramark Limited ( Aramark) of Entier Limited ( Entier). Aramark is an international food and facilities management services supplier, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Entier is a British catering firm with its head office in Westhill, Aberdeenshire. Aramark and Entier both deliver catering services to customers across the UK. They overlap in the provision of offshore catering and related facilities management services ( OCS) to clients, including for assets located on the UK Continental Shelf ( UKCS)......

Mergers The Commission approved: the acquisition of joint control over Property Finder International Ltd by Permira Holdings Limited and General Atlantic PF B. V.......

R ( Bates) v Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court [2025] EWHC 2532 ( Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? This ruling reiterates that the High Court retains a discretion to issue inter partes costs orders in criminal appeals. Under the Murphy principle, such orders were thought unavailable, meaning successful parties in judicial review were unable to recoup their expenditure, even where the prosecution was abusive, vexatious, or lacked merit. Practitioners and clients should now be alive to the prospect of substantial adverse costs if a private prosecution is found to be abusive. Here, the High Court censured the private prosecutor for breaching the duty of candour and withholding material information—failings that directly informed the decision to grant a costs order. The judgment also bolsters defendants: rather than having to rely on the seldom‑met threshold of ‘exceptional...

Assistant Attorney General Nominee Andrew Duva Andrew Duva, nominated to serve as an assistant attorney general, told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would follow a June 2025 memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that introduced new parameters for FCPA enforcement. In reply to a question from Democratic Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, Duva said he looked forward to adhering to that memo and advancing the strong work of the men and women in the Fraud Section. The FCPA forbids Americans, or issuers of American shares, from paying bribes to foreign officials to obtain or retain business. Enforcement of the FCPA falls to the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. In February 2025, Trump suspended enforcement of the FCPA, directing the DOJ to review existing matters and to issue updated guidance on how the law should be prosecuted......

Process & Industrial Developments Ltd v The Federal Republic of Nigeria [2025] UKSC 36 What was the background? The facts The appellant, P& ID, had secured an arbitral award against Nigeria arising from a gas processing agreement for power generation that Nigeria was alleged to have failed to perform. The award totalled US$6.6 billion plus interest. In 2023, Nigeria succeeded in the Commercial Court under section 68(2)(g) of the Arbitration Act 1996, the court finding the award had been procured by fraud. By then, interest had swelled the amount to about US$11 billion—several times Nigeria’s annual health and education budgets. Nigeria obtained an order for its costs. For the section 68 proceedings, Nigeria instructed English solicitors, Mishcon de Reya LLP, who billed in sterling and were paid in sterling. Nigeria’s costs claim is approximately £44 million. The issue P& ID maintained that Nigeria should recover its costs only in its...

Judge Andrew Keyser KC, sitting as a judge of the High Court, dismissed Equitas’s arguments, which had claimed it was entitled to retain reinsurance monies owed to Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Ltd, together with Royal Insurance ( UK) Ltd and Royal & Sun Alliance Reinsurance Ltd, for settlements those entities had funded. Keyser held that Equitas was obliged to honour settlements concluded by the RSA businesses and determined that the RSA entities had not been negligent in disposing of the underlying asbestos, bodily injury and other claims. Royal Insurance Group—now RSA Insurance Group—issued proceedings against Equitas in 2023. The company stated it was reinsured by various underwriters at Lloyd’s of London and elsewhere in connection with an insurance programme for the industrial gas company BOC Group Plc. In 2009, various liabilities were transferred to Equitas......

London NHS Trust v DT and another [2025] EWCOP 36 What was the background? The applicant, a London NHS Trust, asked the Court of Protection for declarations in relation to DT, a 42-year-old woman, the Official Solicitor acting as her litigation friend, and her sister YT named as second respondent. Before 23 August 2025, DT was well; she became unwell on a flight and collapsed at an airport in Country Z, thereafter never regaining consciousness. She sustained cardiac arrests and required mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, with intervals of absent blood flow to vital organs, including the brain, causing hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury. At her family’s request, DT was moved to the Trust’s London hospital in mid- September 2025, where her condition remained unchanged; EEG demonstrated no persuasive cerebral activity and MRI showed severe brainstem damage. Clinicians considered DT likely to be brain stem dead and that...

Nikhil Rathi, the FCA’s chief executive, stated on 22 October 2025 that the fallout from such an attack could reverberate across the economy. He pointed to the costly cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover at the beginning of September 2025. It remains uncertain whether the business held active cyber-insurance at the time of the event. Rathi said the Jaguar Land Rover cyber incident illustrated how a single shock can send ripples throughout the economy......

Although Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohue, did not reference a targeted DWT exemption for investment ILPs in his Budget Day address, the Finance Bill released on 16 October 2025 did include such a measure, sought by several industry bodies on which A& L Goodbody participates. The draft provisions would extend the existing DWT exemptions in section 172C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 ( Ireland) ( TCA 1997 ( IRL)) to encompass ‘relevant distributions’ received by an ILP, or an ‘equivalent partnership’ authorised in the EEA, where specified qualifying conditions are satisfied. Once enacted, the new exemption will apply to relevant distributions made on or after 1 January 2026. Background to introduction of exemption ILPs serve as a key Irish holding vehicle for private assets. It is common for ILPs to route investments through several lower-tier investment subsidiaries ( SPVs), with SPV profits returned to the ILP by way of...