Do more to protect vulnerable adults, say solicitors

Steps should be taken to raise awareness of legislation designed to protect vulnerable adults, according to the body representing solicitors in England and Wales.

The Mental Capacity Act (MCA) is designed to empower and protect people who may not be able to make some decisions for themselves because of an illness or disability, such as dementia, a mental health problem or a learning disability.

But in a submission to a House of Lords Select Committee, the Law Society said that frontline professionals working with vulnerable adults are frequently unaware of the act or lack the skills to put it into practice.

Nicola Mackintosh, a member of the Law Society’s mental health and disability committee, said on 10 September: “Safeguarding the dignity and wellbeing of people with impaired capacity should be a priority for government.

“Solicitors often handle the aftermath of poor implementation of the act and it is essential that steps are taken to increase awareness so our most vulnerable citizens are not at risk.

“Unfortunately, professional training for key front line staff has not kept pace with the increasing complexity of community care. We would like to see more training on the legal framework and practical application of the MCA.”

The Law Society’s submission also called for a review of deprivation of liberty provisions, which form part of the MCA and aim to make sure that people in care homes and hospitals are looked after in a way that does not inappropriately restrict their freedom.

Ms Mackintosh said the provisions need to be extended to protect the increasing number of people in supported living.

‘Planning chamber’ bid to cut development delays

Proposals have been put forward for a specialist planning court to help ensure crucial development projects do not suffer unnecessary legal delays.

The new planning chamber proposed by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling is one of a package of measures designed to speed up the judicial review process and drive out what he called “vexatious” cases.

The proposal is contained in a consultation, launched on 6 September, which is also asking for views on whether, and how, to limit who can apply for a judicial review, for example, whether applications should be restricted to people with a direct interest in a case.

The “planning chamber” would see judicial review decisions relating to major developments taken only by expert judges and would take advantage of streamlined processes so they are considered as quickly as possible.

Developers have complained in the past that lengthy legal delays to projects have forced them into financial difficulty and have caused some schemes to collapse completely.

Mr Grayling said: “We want to make sure judicial review continues its crucial role in holding authorities and others to account, but also that it is used for the right reasons and is not abused by people to cause vexatious delays or to generate publicity for themselves at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.”

Other issues being consulted on in the consultation paper include:

• changing the rules around who has to pay the legal bills for cases, so all parties have an equal interest in avoiding unnecessary costs
• speeding up appeals in important cases by making it possible more often for them to be considered by the Supreme Court without first going to the Court of Appeal.

There has been a huge growth in the number of judicial review applications in recent years, causing the whole system to slow down.

Applications more than doubled from 4,500 in 1998 to 12,400 in 2012, but in 2012 just one in six were granted permission to proceed beyond the first consideration of the application.

Cases often take more than a year to resolve. For planning cases, the average time to resolve an application which went all the way to a final hearing was 370 days in 2011.

Raid marks launch of intellectual property crime squad

Police have launched a new intellectual property crime unit by arresting two men in Birmingham on suspicion of importing thousands of counterfeit DVD box sets and selling them online as legitimate products.

In the early morning swoops on 13 September, detectives seized DVDs with an estimated sale value of £40,000, with titles including Game of Thrones, CSI and Vampire Diaries. The suspects, aged 29 and 28, were taken to a local police station for questioning.

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has been set up to protect UK industries producing legitimate, high quality, physical goods and online and digital content.

The unit is being initially funded by the Intellectual Property Office, with the 19-strong team based at the City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate.

City of London Police Commissioner Adrian Leppard said: “Intellectual property crime is already costing our economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year and placing thousands of jobs under threat, and left unchecked and free to feed on new technology could destroy some of our most creative and productive industries.”

Around seven million people a month visit sites offering illegal content in the UK. Globally, it is projected that digitally pirated music, films and software will account for losses of around $80 billion, a figure expected to rise to $240 billion by 2015.