Keystone Law - Law Firm of the Year

Although this blog is entirely independent and free-standing, I am nevertheless proud of my association with Keystone Law, which has proved to be one of the most dynamic law firms in the country.

So I was very pleased when Keystone Law was recently named as “Law Firm of the Year” at The Lawyer Awards 2020.

It is the first time in the award’s 26-year history that the top prize has been handed to an innovative law firm of this type, having previously been won by some of the UK’s biggest firms including Clifford Chance, Pinsent Masons and Mishcon de Reya.

Keystone Law was highlighted as this year’s big winner for being a pioneer in the legal sector, which since its launch in 2002 has been on an upward growth trajectory, attracting heavyweight lawyers from traditional law firms, all the while providing complete autonomy and freedom. The judges commented that during the coronavirus pandemic “Keystone’s model has been vindicated in spades” and thanks to its innovative use of technology and modern working practices “the firm is lightyears ahead” in enabling lawyers to work remotely and provide high-quality service to clients.

The firm was also praised for its achievements over the last 12 months, which included launching operations in the Middle East, continuing its strong recruitment of high calibre lawyers from top UK law firms and achieving solid financial results, growing its revenue to £49.6 million in 2019.

The accolade follows a rigorous judging process, which included analysing The Lawyer’s proprietary data and market insight alongside input from a judging panel of industry experts.

James Knight, our CEO and founder said:

“It is a huge honour to win this coveted award. When we founded the firm, we knew we wanted to do things differently and completely rethink the law firm model. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the team at Keystone we were able to achieve that aim and we continue to push the boundaries to provide a first-rate alternative to traditional firms. To win this award within less than 20 years of the firm’s inception is an outstanding achievement and I would like to thank everyone who has supported our journey from start-up to tech-enabled Top 100 law firm, particularly our clients and the excellent lawyers who took the jump into new law.”

The Lawyer Awards are a much sought-after accolade, singling out the leading legal teams and transactions across the legal profession and are widely recognised as the legal industry’s leading awards.

So, onwards and upwards.

MARTIN H GOODALL.

USE OF LAND book – Publication imminent

The Revised Edition of The Essential Guide to the Use of Land and Buildings under the Planning Acts and Supplement is about to go to press.

The Revised Edition (with Supplement) not only flags up the old and new Use Classes in the original text, but also brings various other legislative references up to date, and contains new material and re-cast or re-written text.

As I wrote the other day, I would strongly recommend readers to order the Revised Edition of the book, with the Supplement bound in, because the Revised Edition provides a much more useful basic text than the original edition would now do, in relating the new Use Classes to the previous Use Classes. The Supplement describes and discusses the new Use Classes (and contains numerous cross-references to the main text of the book).

The difference in price between the stand-alone Supplement and the Revised Edition of the book (including the Supplement) is only £35. So if you have already ordered the Supplement alone (for £15), or the Supplement plus webinar booking (for £40), but you now wish to upgrade your order to include the Revised Edition of the book (with bound-in Supplement), in place of the Supplement alone, you can do so by paying only £35 more. But you will need to do so almoast immediately, before orders are dispatched. Bath Publishing have kindly agreed to process any revised orders, on receipt of the extra £35. So if you wish to upgrade an existing order, you should send an email to info@bathpublishing.co.uk and they'll take it from there.

However, if you have not yet placed an order at all, the best route is go is through the Bath Publishing website (using the link on the left-hand side of this page). There is still time to place an order for either the Revised Edition (with Supplement bound in) or the Supplement alone, and to book for the webinar, if you have not yet done so.

Purchasers of the digital edition of the book (or supplement) should receive this by 26 November, and the printed edition should also become available soon afterwards. So you shouldn’t have to wait too long now for your order to arrive.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

High Court challenge to GPDO & UCO fails

The legal challenge by ‘Rights: Community: Action’ to the amendments made to the GPDO and the Use Classes Order was dismissed in a judgment of the Divisional Court this morning.

I haven’t managed to get hold of the judgment itself yet, but I understand that the Court dismissed every ground on which the claimants sought to impugn the Secretary of State’s action in making the Statutory Instruments which were under challenge.

Lewis LJ is quoted as having pointed out in his judgment that the role of the court in judicial review is concerned with resolving questions of law. The court is not responsible for making political, social, or economic choices. Those decisions, and those choices, are ones that Parliament has entrusted to ministers and other public bodies. It is not the role of the court to assess the underlying merits of the proposals.

Holgate J is reported to have added that none of the Statutory Instruments in question constituted a plan or programme setting the framework for future development consents, so there was no requirement for strategic environmental assessment.

The Court also held that the claimants had no realistic prospect of establishing that the Secretary of State had failed to take account of the public sector equality duty set out in the Equality Act 2010.

The Court seems to have been persuaded that the current coronavirus crisis does excuse ministers from strict compliance with a promised consultation process. The Court also seems to have accepted that the government’s decision to enlarge PD rights in this way was prompted by a legitimate desire to promote development in the difficult economic circumstances that had been caused by the pandemic.

For all these reasons, the claim for judicial review was therefore dismissed.

The claimants’ solicitors expressed disappointment on behalf of their clients, noting that whilst the judges had recognised the very significant environmental impact that the changes arising from these two Statutory Instruments will have, the Court had reached a conclusion on the technical requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive that puts these changes outside the scope of the kind of plans or programmes that require assessments. Their clients were nevertheless firmly of the view that the Directive does apply to these SIs and so they would be seeking permission to appeal that ground.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

USE OF LAND book - REVISED Edition

When I recently wrote the new Supplement to The Essential Guide to the Use of Land and Buildings under the Planning Acts, it was also my intention to make some minor amendments to update the text of the book itself, but in practice I found myself carrying out a rather more extensive revision of the text than I had originally intended, so that rather than a mere ‘updated’ edition, we are now going to publish a Revised Edition (with Supplement), which not only flags up the old and new Use Classes in the original text, but also brings various other legislative references up to date, and contains some new material and re-cast or re-written text.

In order to make proper sense of the Supplement describing and discussing the new Use Classes (which contains numerous cross-references to the main text of the book), the Revised Edition of the book itself will provide a much more useful basic text than the original edition would now do. It is solely for that reason (and not because I want to sell a lot more books) that I would strongly recommend readers to order the Revised Edition of the book, with the Supplement bound in, rather than just buying the Supplement alone.

The difference in price between the stand-alone Supplement and the Revised Edition of the book (including the Supplement) is only £35, which when you think about it is a remarkable bargain for such a useful book.

If you have already ordered the Supplement alone (for £15), or the Supplement plus webinar booking (for £40), you may now wish to upgrade your order to include the Revised Edition of the book (with bound-in Supplement), in place of the Supplement alone, by paying only £35 more. Bath Publishing have kindly agreed to process any revised orders, on receipt of the extra £35. So if you wish to upgrade an existing order, you should send an email to info@bathpublishing.co.uk and they'll take it from there.

I should emphasise though that if you have not yet placed an order at all, the best route is go is through the Bath Publishing website (using the link on the left-hand side of this page). There is still time to place an order, and to book for the webinar, if you have not yet done so.

We hope to go to press very shortly, and our aim is that, at the very least, you should have received the digital edition of the book (or Supplement) by 26 November, but we have been working to extremely tight deadlines, and so the production schedule has necessarily been squeezed. So it’s fingers crossed, but you certainly won’t have to wait too long for your order to arrive.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

GPDO – Yet more amendments

The government has been promising for some time to introduce a minimum space standard for new residential units created as permitted development under the GPDO. The Secretary of State also announced recently that he would extend the temporary PD right for hot food takeaways. Both of these changes to the GPDO have now been made by the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 [SI 2020 No.1243] which were made on 9 November.

With effect from 6 April 2021, the GPDO will not permit any residential conversion where the gross internal floor area is less than 37 square metres in size, or which does not comply with the nationally prescribed space standard issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government on 27th March 2015. (The adequacy of natural light had already been added to the matters requiring prior approval.)

It is noteworthy that, whilst various other issues (including the adequacy of natural light) are listed as matters that require prior approval, and are therefore dependent on the LPA notifying the applicant of its determination of the prior approval application within 56 days, the absolute prohibition on development that does not comply with the stated space standards does not depend on the determination of any prior approval application, but will apply even in those cases where a development could otherwise proceed in the event of the LPA’s failure to determine the prior approval application within (in the case of Part 3) the 56-day period. The space standards apply to all permitted development under the GPDO involving the creation of new dwellings, including for example the various forms of development permitted under Part 20.

The other point that readers will immediately spot is that there is quite a generous window of opportunity for developers to put forward proposals for ‘rabbit hutch’ or ‘broom cupboard’ dwellings before the space standards kick in. Although this provision is stated to come into force on 6 April 2021, the transitional provisions define the precise timing by reference to the ‘prior approval event’. These transitional provisions are one the finest examples of gobbledygook that I have ever encountered. In fact, the convoluted way in which the transitional provisions are set out in Regulation 12 deserves some sort of booby prize for outstandingly opaque legislative drafting.

Boiled down to their bare essentials, what they mean is that the provisions outlined above will not apply to a development in respect of which a prior approval application is made before 6 April 2021 (irrespective of the fact that the prior approval or expiry of the 56-day period, in the case of Part 3, will occur after that date); nor will they apply where prior approval is granted on appeal, where the appeal against a refusal of prior approval is lodged within the 6 months following the date of refusal [or non-determination] of a prior approval application that had been made before 6 April 2021. This relates to prior approval applications for residential development under both Part 3 and Part 20.

As mentioned above, the temporary change of use to use as a hot food take-away under Class DA of Part 4 has been extended [by Regulation 5] for an extra year, from its previous expiry date of 23 March 2021 to 23 March 2022. As I pointed out when originally reporting on this temporary use right, it does not override any condition in a planning permission that precludes use as a hot food takeaway.

One other change worth noting is set out in Regulation 6, which comes into force on 3 December 2020. This amends the PD right for demolition of buildings under Part 11, Class B. Apart from excepting from this PD right the demolition of any unlisted building in a conservation area, Part 11 did not previously exclude the demolition of any particular type of building, but this amendment now excludes from the PD right under Class B of Part 11, the demolition of any building that is used, or was last used, for the purpose of—

(i) a concert hall;
(ii) a venue for live music performance; or
(iii) a theatre.”

These are all sui generis uses, but the exclusion has not been extended to the demolition of a cinema, bingo hall or dance hall, or any of the other sui generis uses listed in Article 3(6) of the UCO.

As with other PD rights, the transitional provisions in Regulations 12 provide that where the prior approval application that is required under Part 11 is made prior to 3 December 2020 the exclusions noted above will not apply; nor will they apply where prior approval is granted on appeal, where the appeal against a refusal of prior approval is lodged within the 6 months following the date of refusal [or non-determination] of a prior approval application that had been made before 3 December 2020. [This prior approval does not relate to the principle of demolition, but only to the method of demolition and any proposed restoration of the site. Except in strictly limited circumstances, specified in the GPDO, commencing demolition before a prior approval application has been submitted, and determined, is not permitted development, and may lead to enforcement action being taken.]

© MARTIN H GOODALL