Legal Practice Notes

In brief Data protection rules across the EEA (the EU together with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein) aim to make sure information about living people, falling within the concept of ‘personal data’, is handled lawfully and with care. To achieve this, these laws place extensive duties and responsibilities on anyone ‘processing’ personal data, as well as on the controllers directing such processing activities. The framework explicitly acknowledges that handling children’s personal data demands tailored safeguards, and grants strengthened protections for children’s information in particular. That is because children may understand less about the risks, consequences and safeguards involved, and about their rights concerning personal data processing. These extra safeguards also matter more broadly for organisations not intentionally targeting children’s data (for example, designing a service for adults), as they must assess whether they might unintentionally process children’s personal data (for instance, if a child uses that...

FORTHCOMING CHANGE: On 15 January 2026, the European Data Protection Board put out for public consultation its Recommendations 1/2026 on applications for approval and on the core elements and principles to be included in Processor Binding Corporate Rules ( Article 47 GDPR). These Recommendations annul and supersede—while substantively building on—in particular Working Party Guidance WP 257 rev.01 ( Working Document on BCRs for processors) and Working Party Guidance WP 265 ( Recommendation on the Standard Application form for Approval of Processor Binding Corporate Rules for the Transfer of Personal Data). The consultation runs until 2 March 2026, with the text taking effect upon publication of the final version following the public consultation process. For further details, see Practice Note: EU GDPR— EDPB supranational level guidance tracker. This Practice Note addresses Binding Corporate Rules ( BCRs) as one of the mechanisms that permits the...

By Marjolein Geus and Feyo Sickinghe. On 15 December 2020, the European Commission (the Commission) unveiled drafts for two measures to govern digital services: the Digital Services Act ( DSA) and the Digital Markets Act ( DMA). The DMA appeared in the EU’s Official Journal on 12 October 2022, took effect on 1 November 2022, and will apply from 2 May 2023. Identification of gatekeeper platforms is scheduled for mid‑2023, with businesses expected to meet DMA obligations from March 2024. Introduction The Digital Services Act and revisions to the e‑commerce Directive 2000/311 (the Digital Services Act or DSA) target the oversight of varied online intermediaries, spanning basic conduit services through to very large online platforms, for which differentiated levels of rules are set. The Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Digital Markets Act (the Digital Markets Act, DMA, or the...

This Practice Note outlines the principal provisions of Regulation ( EU) 2020/1784, the Service Regulation (recast), which governs serving documents from one EU Member State to another. The primary channel is via the transmitting and receiving agencies within EU Member States, as addressed in Practice Note: —the stages of transmitting and serving documents). Other service routes are also available under the regulation. The framework can be challenging to follow. For guidance, see Practice Note: —commonly asked questions and answers, which should be read alongside this Practice Note. All forms referred to as appearing in Annex I of the regulation are accessible on the justice.europa website: on-line forms— Serving documents (recast) forms... Practical considerations Service outside the jurisdiction is highly complex and may prove time-consuming. You may need to organise translations of final form documents, and you might choose to effect service using more than one...

Any entity affected by an alleged breach of EU competition rules may lodge a complaint with the European Commission (the Commission) concerning relevant agreements and/or practices and related conduct that could constitute violations of Articles 101 and/or 102 TFEU. In its Notice on the handling of complaints (the Complaints Notice), the Commission explains that it seeks to motivate and encourage citizens and undertakings to proactively approach the relevant public enforcers of competition law in order to alert them to suspected contraventions of the competition rules. For ease of reference, this Practice Note calls the party submitting the complaint the ‘complainant’. The party complained against is termed the ‘defendant’. Additional detail on how the Commission deals with complaints can be found in section 5 of the Commission’s notice on best practices for the conduct of proceedings relating to Article 101 and 102 TFEU (the Notice on Best...

This Practice Note offers high-level guidance on Regulation ( EU) 2016/1011 (the EU Benchmarks Regulation). For more detailed coverage, see Practice Note: EU Benchmarks Regulation—essentials. Background to the EU Benchmarks Regulation Benchmarks are central to pricing a vast array of financial instruments and both commercial and non-commercial agreements. After instances of manipulation in certain benchmarks, including LIBOR, widespread doubts arose over the reliability of benchmarks as a whole. Regulators responded with investigations and enforcement measures across multiple benchmarks. In this context, on 18 September 2013 the Commission put forward a proposal for a regulation on indices used as benchmarks in financial instruments and financial contracts. The EU Benchmarks Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 29 June 2016, took effect on 30 June 2016, and the bulk of its provisions have applied since 1 January...

Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme ( ESOS) ESOS is a programme for energy assessment and efficiency savings. It applies on a compulsory basis to entities that satisfy the eligibility criteria, namely large undertakings and their corporate groups. Its origin is the EU Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/ EU, art 8(4)–(6), which oblige EU Member States to ensure that enterprises which are not small and medium enterprises ( SMEs) undergo an energy audit at least once every four years. For further detail, see Practice Note: Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/ EU—snapshot [ Archived]. The obligations in art 8(4)—(6) of the Energy Efficiency Directive were implemented in the UK through the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme Regulations 2014, SI 2014/1643 (the ESOS Regulations). Those Regulations were made on 24 June 2014 and came into force on 17 July 2014. With effect from 26 October 2015, modest amendments were...

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note has been archived and is not maintained. This tracker compiles and summarises significant new and forthcoming legislation and consultations in England and Wales linked to water and the marine sector. The tracker is divided into the following sections: Legislation—showing key forthcoming legislation of interest to environment lawyers in England and Wales entering into force from 1 January 2024 Consultations—presenting the current status and latest developments of consultations open from 1 January 2024, or launched at an earlier date but still open as at 1 January 2024, conducted by government departments, regulators and other bodies in relation to environmental law in England and Wales, and consultations conducted by government departments, regulators and other bodies in relation to environmental law in England and Wales which closed from 1 January 2024 To track EU developments in this area, see: EU...

Introduction On 26 May 2023, the Arbitration and Mediation Act, 2023 ( AMA) took effect, repealing the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1998 ( ACA). The AMA fills several gaps left by the ACA and settles a number of contentious Nigerian court decisions on arbitration. This Practice Note also points to the key changes introduced by the new legislation. Status of arbitral awards Under Nigerian law, an arbitral award is final and binding. Section 31 of the ACA confirmed this under the previous framework, and section 57(1) of the AMA restates it, expressly recognising that both domestic and foreign awards bind the parties. It provides that an arbitral award, regardless of the country or state where it is made, shall be recognised as binding and, upon a written application to the Court, shall be enforced by the Court. The form and contents of arbitral awards (section 47 of the AMA and...

Employment-related loans The benefits code in ITEPA 2003, Part 3 contains tailored provisions for ‘employment-related loans’ which, in some circumstances, give rise to income tax and National Insurance contributions ( NICs) for directors and employees, and employer’s NICs for employers, in respect of such borrowing. This Practice Note explains what amounts to an employment-related loan for the purposes of the benefits code. The concept is broadly framed and is treated as covering loans made by the employer and by other associated persons. Lending by prospective employers also falls within the definition. As with any other form of employment reward, where a third party rather than the employer provides the loan, it is prudent to consider whether the disguised remuneration rules in ITEPA 2003, Part 7A apply, as those provisions take precedence over most other employment income charging rules (including the benefits code). For further...

The Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 ( ET Rules 2024), SI 2024/1155 The ET Rules 2024 provide the overarching scheme for how employment tribunal hearings are conducted, covering tribunal make-up, case management powers, hearing processes, evidence, representation, the use of technology, decision-making, and the legal force and finality of judgments and orders. Under these Rules, every hearing falls into one of two categories: a preliminary hearing (see Practice Note: Preliminary hearings in the employment tribunal), or a final hearing (see Practice Notes: Preparation for employment tribunal final hearing and Procedure at employment tribunal final hearing) The matters that each type of hearing can address are not the same, and different provisions of the ET Rules 2024 apply to their procedures. These points are considered separately in the Practice Notes referenced above. Some provisions apply across both preliminary and final hearings, and other...

This Practice Note explores an employer’s vicarious responsibility for deliberate or criminal wrongdoing by an employee. It reviews commonly encountered scenarios involving sexual abuse, physical attacks, incidents arising from workplace tensions, and high jinks or pranks that misfire, as well as incidents that stem from interpersonal friction at work and conflict. Following the House of Lords’ ruling in Lister v Hesley Hall in 2001, it is established that, provided the relevant test is satisfied, an employer can be vicariously answerable for intentional harm committed by an employee (or, in some circumstances, by others occupying a similar or analogous position). See also Practice Notes: Nature and operation of vicarious liability Scope and impact of vicarious liability Vicarious liability in the course of employment—the close connection test The aim of this Practice Note is to provide a summary of the position in...

This Practice Note examines when a court will find an employer vicariously liable for a tort committed by an employee. The courts’ treatment of the ‘close connection’ test has shifted over time, and this Practice Note offers practitioners clarity on how the doctrine has progressed. To determine the situations in which a court may hold an employer responsible for an employee’s tort, it is helpful to trace the doctrine’s evolution... Salmond test Historically, the governing test was set out by Salmond in his 1907 work, Law of Torts. The central proposition was that a master would not be liable for a servant’s wrongful act unless it was carried out in the course of employment. Salmond added that an act would be treated as within the course of employment if it was either: a wrongful act that the master had authorised, or a wrongful and...

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note is archived, is not being updated, and is supplied for background reference only. UPDATE (23/3/21): On 22 March 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care announced, among other changes, that 12 provisions will be removed from the Coronavirus Act 2020 ( CA 2020) following its one-year review. These include sections 8 and 9 of the CA 2020 on emergency volunteering leave, which have not been commenced. See: LNB News 23/03/2021 40. This Practice Note outlines the proposals in the Coronavirus Act 2020 ( Act) for emergency volunteering leave ( EVL), a temporary statutory right to unpaid leave for employees and workers who wish to volunteer in the health and social care sectors during the coronavirus ( COVID-19) outbreak. The relevant provisions of the Act are not yet in effect, as the necessary commencement regulations have not been made. A...

This handbook empowers organisations to embed key climate factors within the commercial logic of deals and agreements, supporting them in achieving climate objectives and......

This Practice Note outlines steps that can be taken when there are concerns a child is not being suitably educated, for example where truancy is present, and intervention is needed by way of an education supervision order. It addresses the conditions that must be satisfied, the impact and duration of an order, and matters of non-compliance together with discharge of the order. Where worries about inadequate education form part of a broader context in which a child is generally suffering (or at risk of suffering) significant harm attributable to a failure of reasonable parental care, or the child is beyond parental control, the local authority may issue care proceedings under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 ( Ch A 1989). If the child is absent from school and remains living at home, the court may reach the view that the child is either...

Introduction—transactional Islamic finance There is a diversity of views and guiding maxims expressed by members of Shari’ah boards when applying Shari’ah to commercial contexts, which in turn can lead to apparent divergence in the legal documents used within Islamic finance transactions. In response to these recognised market inconsistencies, attention worldwide has increasingly turned to the development of national, centralised regulatory authorities dedicated to Islamic finance. As an illustration, in 2017, following the national sanction of an Islamic finance industry, Morocco created by royal decree the Moroccan Shari’ah Committee for Participative Finance, comprising 10 Islamic scholars and financial experts, to oversee and regulate the newly established financial sector. The Central Bank of Bahrain (the CBB), which has overseen Bahrain’s financial system since 2002, has taken a comparable path, announcing in September 2017 that all banking...

Use this FLASHCARD to grasp and remember the key points of the oversight framework for critical ICT providers, including cloud computing service providers, established by Regulation ( EU) 2022/2554, the Digital Operational Resilience Act ( DORA). What are critical ICT service providers? Within DORA, the European Supervisory Authorities ( ESAs — ESMA, EBA and EIOPA) may designate ICT service providers as ‘critical’ for the purposes of DORA by reference to a blend of quantitative and qualitative criteria: the potential systemic effect on the stability, continuity or quality of financial services if the provider were to suffer a large‑scale operational outage or failure to deliver its services, taking into account how many financial entities it supports and the overall asset values of those entities the systemic nature or significance of the dependent financial entities, assessed by reference to how many global systemically important...

Because arbitration is inherently cross-border, parties and tribunals routinely grapple with multiple currencies, sometimes within a single case and often simultaneously across claims, with claims advanced, and frequently granted, in several denominations. It is common for the same proceedings to feature distinct heads of claim tied to different monies. Importance of currency Selecting the currency for the award is often an early question for the tribunal, and at times one of the hardest in practice, in reality, largely owing to exchange-rate volatility; the choice of currency can spell the difference between a mere trifle and a sizeable fortune. The difficulty is commonly significantly magnified by the lengthy gap between the loss being sustained, the proceedings being started, and any award (if any) in favour of the injured party. As rates move, the outcome may become an unforeseen windfall or an unanticipated penalty; whichever direction the currency takes, one side...

Practice Note: bonus plans for employees and directors This Practice Note explores how bonus arrangements operate for employees and directors. It considers the two principal forms of scheme: discretionary and contractual. It looks closely at discretionary awards, covering eligibility, the exercise of discretion, limitations and expectations. The Note also addresses tax aspects of bonus plans and what follows when they are ended. It sets out points relevant to scheme design, drafting issues and regulatory matters, including compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code. Finally, it considers how pregnancy or maternity leave, part-time or fixed-term status, long‑term sickness and linked discrimination concerns affect bonus schemes and payments, available remedies, and the routes for bringing bonus claims in the employment tribunal or the court. Bonuses can strongly motivate and help retain staff while enabling employers to manage wage costs. In some sectors and...