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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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Finance and Your Charity: Navigating the Government Schemes; Managing Solvency

With charities coming under immense financial pressures as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, Bates Wells partnered with NCVO and CFG on a webinar to discuss the financing options currently available, employment issues (including the government’s job retention scheme), and managing through the crisis. View webinar
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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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Institute of Fundraising: Lawrence Simanowitz and Hannah Lyons comment on fundraising research and GDPR

Following the arrival of GDPR, Lawrence and Hannah discuss what it has meant for major donor fundraising from a legal and compliance position. Writing for the Institute of Fundraising, Lawrence and Hannah examine the steps major fundraising needed to take to get back onto its feet following the arrival of GDPR, in particular what major …
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Charity Commission issues governance alert to large service-providing charities

On 25 June, the Charity Commission issued a regulatory alert to the leaders of large service-providing charities.  The Commission has sent the alert to charities which have the following profile: The alert follows a series of Charity Commission investigations into household name charities which found governance and safeguarding failings. If your charity meets this profile …
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Charity & Social Enterprise Update | Summer 2020

In the Summer issue of our Charity & Social Enterprise Update: If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this Update, please contact our Charity team.
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Raising Equity Finance – Ten SEIS and EIS pitfalls to avoid

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (“SEIS”) and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”) provide an array of attractive tax incentives to investors and have proved to be a useful tool for start-up trading companies and higher-risk trading companies looking to raise equity finance. The SEIS rules are designed to mirror the EIS rules (but there are …
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Charities and cybercrime

In recent weeks we have heard much about the threat to the public and private sectors from COVID-19-related cyber-attacks. Charities face the same threat. In this guest article, Alan Bryce, Head of Development, Counter Fraud and Cybercrime at the Charity Commission for England & Wales highlights the commission’s work in this area. In October 2019 …
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