Scotland

Recent Articles

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  16/01/2025

  International

  CMS Expert Guide on Beauty

  With a highly circumspect online and IRL consumer, the beauty industry is facing increasing scrutiny on everything from ingredients to their supply chain. For those offering treatment services in particular, which has until now been the wild west of wellness, there’s a shift in consumer demand for transparency and accountability – namely a desire for better regulation and insurance. This follows well documented horror stories in national press worldwide of those travelling to secure these services at bargain prices with catastrophic results.This Expert Guide on Beauty considers...

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  16/01/2025

  United Kingdom

  CQC evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee shows the scale of operational failings

  The CQC Chair and Chief Executive, Ian Dilks and Sir Julian Hartley, appeared before the Health and Social Care Committee yesterday, 15 January 2025.  Their evidence revealed the extent of the operational failings following the disastrous transformation plan and the scale of the improvement needed to restore confidence in the regulator, which Sir Julian Hartley said would be addressed initially through four priorities:Complete more assessmentsDeal with backlogs in notificationsGet the 500 “stuck” assessments out of the regulatory platformReduce the time to register servicesAverage...

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  15/01/2025

  United Kingdom

  Making progress: Ofgem publishes call for input on long-duration electricity storage cap and floor regime

  In October 2024, the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (“DESNZ”) confirmed its intention to introduce a cap and floor regime (“Regime”) to encourage investment in long-duration electricity storage (“LDES”). This decision was outlined in its response (the “Response”) to its January 2024 consultation (the “Consultation”), which aimed to address the challenges and opportunities associated with investment in LDES. It also announced that Ofgem would administer the Regime. The Response noted that Ofgem and DESNZ intend to publish...

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  14/01/2025

  United Kingdom

  The Data Looks Positive: Revised NPPF Addresses Datacentres and Recognises Importance for Strategic Economic Growth

  Summary  The early Christmas present of a revised National Planning Policy Framework (“NPPF”), published on 12 December 2024, has the planning world talking. Voted into power with a resounding 156 seat majority, the newly elected Labour government has been keen to get some big ticket (and in some cases controversial) proposals out early. The changes to the NPPF are set to reflect this government’s commitment to economic growth, which has been centred on development.Key targets for this growth are proposals for a modern tech-focussed economy and nowhere is this more relevant...

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  14/01/2025

  United Kingdom

  No epidemic of Covid-19 Employers Liability claims - Edwards & Others v 2 Sisters Food Group Ltd [2024] EWCC 21 considered

  In Edwards & Others v 2 Sisters Food Group Ltd [2024] EWCC 21, the defendant successfully applied for summary judgment against all claimants on the basis that their claims had no realistic prospect of success.The claimants worked at 2 Sisters Food Group’s chicken factory in Llangefni, Anglesey. All claimed that they had developed symptoms of Covid-19 in or around June 2020. It was alleged that 2 Sisters had breached its duty of care towards them, failing to take all reasonable steps to manage the risk of transmission within the factory, and that their Covid-19 disease had been caused...

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  14/01/2025

  United Kingdom

  Copyright and AI: how is the UK government proposing to strike a balance between the creative industries and AI sector?

  On 17 December 2024, the UK government published a new consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence (“AI”), seeking views on how to ensure the legal framework in the UK for copyright and AI can support both the creative industries and the AI sector.This is the third consultation on AI and intellectual property (“IP”) in the last five years. The 2020 call for views covered patents, copyright and related rights, designs, trade marks and trade secrets. Based on the response to that call for views, the UK government decided to consult further, in 2021, on how AI should...

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