Karen Collins

Build Back Better: Impact Investing – financing the profit-with-purpose economy

Systemic change is needed in order to tackle the social and planetary problems we face. Business is driving increasingly towards greater corporate purpose and stakeholder capitalism, and its fuel must be investments that seek returns through creating a green and inclusive economy. There’s evidence for the benefits of integrating social and environmental impacts alongside financial …
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Immigration and changing your structure

Organisations shouldn’t underestimate the immigration considerations when faced with a change in structure. You may be affected if you already have a licence to sponsor migrant workers from outside the EEA or you are considering applying for one in order to sponsor new arrivals from the EEA from 1 January 2021.
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Civil Society: Leticia Jennings unpacks the most important charity law case in recent years

Leticia Jennings, partner in our Dispute Resolution team, has recently spoken to Civil Society to discuss the most important charity law case in recent years. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that members of charitable companies have fiduciary duties and can be controlled by the courts. This then led to the unlocking of $440m for UK charity, Big …
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Personnel Today: Chetal Patel on the immigration algorithm

Chetal Patel, partner in our Immigration team has recently spoken to Personnel Today regarding the Home Office decision to scrap the use of its “streaming algorithm” to determine immigration cases. This was an artificial intelligence tool that campaigners have described as “racist” and the decision to stop the use of the tool came ahead of …
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Impact finance for real estate

The rapid growth of impact finance in recent years has seen sustainability and socially responsible investing move to the top of the agenda. Malcolm Headley and Christina Tennant argue that real estate finance has to be at the heart of impact finance discussions.
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Coronavirus and Employment Law: what do you need to know?

In this week’s roundup, we examine what the evolving coronavirus pandemic could mean for employment law. We examine the impact on employees and employers, with a particular focus on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme – Know How Our Employment team are constantly reviewing the new Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and compiling their knowledge to …
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Law Society Gazette: Melanie Carter writes on regulators’ public law duties in the time of coronavirus

In a briefing for the Gazette’s latest ‘Practice Points’ feature, Melanie Carter explains how the regulators are now trying to ‘work out how best to meet their statutory duties’. Shared in today’s Law Society Gazette Daily Update, this piece goes into detail about how regulators and courts are responding including reprioritising their functions, considering how …
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Home Office encourages employers to apply for a sponsor licence early in preparation for the new post-Brexit immigration system

As with the start of any new financial year, comes with it, new Immigration Rules and Home Office guidance. This year is no different. You may recall that in the Home Office’s policy paper on the UK’s points based immigration system published on 19 February 2020, employers were encouraged to consider applying for sponsorship status …
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Landlords and Tenants: Surviving Coronavirus Together

In association with Cluttons, we have put together this article focusing on landlords and tenants. The UK Government is relatively reluctant to legislate in the commercial real estate arena but in these unprecedented times the Coronavirus Act 2020 (25 March 2020) does contain measures that impact on commercial real estate.  However, the provisions are arguably …
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COVID-19: competition, procurement and state aid

Understandably it might not be at the forefront of your minds but we thought it important to highlight that there have been some public announcements regarding UK competition law, the EU public procurement and State Aid frameworks during the COVID crisis. The public announcements provide guidance and may go a little way to ease pressure …
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Citizenship applications – high fees for children found to be unlawful

The fee to register a child as a British citizen is £1,012. The high level of the fee, which even applies where a child has a legal entitlement to register as British, has prevented many children from applying for citizenship because their families simply cannot afford to pay. The administrative cost for processing these applications is …
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Personnel Today: Chetal Patel comments on Australia rejection of visa-free immigration arrangements

Chetal Patel, Partner in our Immigration Team, has spoken with Personnel Today following suggestions from the Australian government which appear to rule out a bilateral visa-free immigration agreement with the UK post-Brexit. Speaking to reporter Adam McCulloch, Chetal identified the negative implications of this news for the government’s Brexit strategy, noting that “although bilateral trade …
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