ContractStore Legal Business Blog

If you receive dodgy offers through the post, you can help the authorities by taking part in the nationwide ‘Scamnesty’ campaign which is launched today by the Office of Fair Trading.

Scams cost the UK an estimated £3.5 billion a year.

As part of Scams Awareness Month the OFT, in partnership with over 50 local authority Trading Standards Services, is asking members of the public to collect any potential scam mailings they have recently received and drop them into designated ‘Scamnesty’ bins or boxes at local libraries and other public areas across the country. The designated bins are being promoted locally by Trading Standards Services with the theme ‘Drop in and drop them in it’.

Every year an estimated three million people fall victim to mass marketed scams such as bogus lotteries, deceptive prize draws and sweepstakes, fake psychics, get-rich-quick schemes and miracle health cures. Many of these scams are sent through the post, as well as by email or over the phone, and target the elderly and vulnerable.
However, OFT research suggests that less than 5% of victims report the scam to the authorities.

The Scamnesty campaign continues until 27th February.

For more information you can go to http://www.oft.gov.uk

 Or if you think you have been the victim of a scam, or you suspect a scam, call Consumer Direct for clear, practical consumer advice on 08454 04 05 06 or http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk.

Companies will have to look carefully at their employment and recruitment policies should an opinion of the EU issued yesterday be adopted by the full European Court. Sharon Coleman, a legal secretary, is suing her former employers, claiming that they failed to allow her time off to care for her severely disabled son. The opinion, handed down by an adviser to the European Court of Justice, holds that existing anti-discrimination laws which apply to the disabled also cover carers.

In other words, millions of workers who are forced to juggle fulltime care with their job would be able to demand more flexible working hours. About one in eight adults in the UK are carers.

For the last couple of years I have designed a mousemat with a calendar and ruler on it, as a ContractStore Christmas present for, let’s say, 300 of our closest friends. We still have some left for 2008 so if you email us we can send you your free calendar/ruler/mousemat (while stocks last). 

You can also download the mousemat template here and use it to order your own from the printers, or just print it out and stick it on the wall - or on last year’s mousemat. A layer of varnish will protect it.

See - we are not only lowering legal costs for small businesses everywhere but we are promoting recycling as well. The originals are printed on ‘22 recycled plastic cups’ apparently and you can reuse it when the year is up as a place mat - paint it first. For more ideas on recycling your mousemat, get in touch.

Last week we visited the London Youth Support Trust to deliver 300 CDs donated to LYST, to benefit the young entrepreneurs in the scheme. LYST is strongly supported by the High Sheriff of London Jan Pethick, who attended the presentation, and the Speaker of Hackney, Councillor Faizullah Khan, came by in -between some citizenship ceremonies. He met jeweller Cathrine Bysheim who is one of the young entrepreneurs in LYST’s Hackney centre. We also met several other of the people in the scheme. It was really inspiring to see the work being done there.

Those of you who are not going to get your tax paid on time (and remember 31 January is the deadline for many of us)  may be interested to know that from 6 January 2008, the interest rate charged by the Revenue on late or overdue payments has been reduced.  And so has the interest rate they will give you if you have made an overpayment.

The rate of interest charged on most taxes including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax and stamp duty land tax  changes from 8.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent.

The rate of interest on overpaid income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, stamp duty and stamp duty land tax  changes from 4.00 per cent to 3.00 per cent. 

Full details can be found on the HMRC website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk

Welcome to 2008. Almost all economic forecasts for the coming year are pretty grim, with oil and food prices set to rise, the credit crunch to continue and house prices falling. 

In the law, whenever the corporate boys run low on work, the litigators and insolvency practitioners start to get busy.  So if, as predicted, things get a lot tougher,  there is going to be more likelihood of business failures, bad debts and contract disputes.

Our advice is - at least make sure you have some decent contracts in place to protect you in the coming times:  a properly drafted contract does for business what a well-tiled roof does for a house.    ContractStore has a wide range of documents than can help to protect your business at a very small cost.  So stop by our website as you come back from the sale at B&Q!

 Enjoy 2008 - the worst may not happen and even if it does, as any real enterpreneur will tell you, there are always opportunities to be had - whether the economy is on the way up - or on the way down!

Tony Gimple of Crisis Survivor is a recent ContractStore customer. His business is all about protecting yours from crisis and disaster. He was so pleased with ContractStore’s contracts that he sent us a useful document of his own. You can use it to check how well your business would cope with unforeseen disaster.

Take the Crisis Survivor Ten Minute Assessment and find out how your business would cope in a crisis.

A new Planning Bill was published last week by the Government. The main objective of the new law is to speed up the planning process for major infrastructure projects – new roads, airports, nuclear power stations etc. While it is true that any major project has a lot of hurdles to overcome, the new arrangements load the dice very heavily in favour of the developer. Under the Bill, the main features are:

• The Government will publish ‘National Policy Statements’ setting out the major infrastructure projects it wants to see.
• A new Infrastructure Planning Commission will be set up to decide on all infrastructure projects. The members of the Commission will be appointed by the Government.
• The normal planning process will not apply. Instead of seeking planning permission and a range of other consents that are currently needed, only one consent will be needed – from the Infrastructure Planning Commission and this will not only give planning consent but can give consent for other related issues – e.g. compulsory acquisition of land for the development
• In reaching a decision, the IPC has to decide the application in accordance with the National Policy Statement. It also has to consider other factors such as whether the application would breach EU directives or any other law or if the adverse impact would outweigh the benefits.
• The IPC will usually hold a hearing for interested parties and examine the evidence for and against the application.

The net result is likely to mean the Government will be able to push through any major development that they want to see: since the IPC will consist of individuals selected by the Government and they have to decide on applications primarily in accordance with Government policy as set out in a National Policy Statement, there will be little scope for objective criteria being applied and the existing cadre of qualified planning inspectors will be by-passed.

It is a sad irony that just when Governments should be reducing CO2 emissions, the British Government is paving the way for a procedure that is designed to allow major developments in roads, power stations and airports – no doubt beginning with a third runway at Heathrow.

It is not without relevance that the White Paper which is the basis for the new Bill was written by Rod Eddington, former CEO of British Airways, and contained a number of references to the long process that took place before Terminal 5 at Heathrow was given the go ahead. And the Government is currently ‘consulting’ on a third runway aimed at doubling the volume of air traffic at Heathrow.

To read the Bill you can go to http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2007-08/planning.html

This Monday,10th December, the Construction Industry Council (CIC)published the CIC Consultants’ Contract and Scope of Services. The contract is a new multi-disciplinary form for use across the UK by experienced clients (employers or design and build contractors) appointing teams of consultants on major building projects.

At ContractStore we have for some time had a professional appointment for sale on our website which has a similar objective and is designed for use by a client appointing a number of different consultants on a construction project. Our document is in a form that will be familiar to, and accepted by, most construction lawyers as well as being easily understood by clients, whether experienced or not. For more information, go to http://www.contractstore.com/consultant

We have not yet reviewed the CIC appointment but will do so soon. As anyone engaged on a construction project will know, each professional organisation tends to promote its own form for use by its members - architects, quantity surveyors, etc., and these forms tend to be very different in style and language as well as too protective of the professional. What a client needs is a set of appointments with broadly similar terms and conditions and the CIC form - like ours- should be helpful in this respect.

The hourly rates of law firms in the UK have increased by 89% nationally over the past four years, according to a speaker at the Sweet & Maxwell Forum for General Counsel held last week in London. The conference discussed ways of controlling the cost of external legal support.  One of the speakers, Richard Susskind, a leading proponent of online legal services and author of The Future of Law and The Future of Law Revisited, told the conference that lawyers should move towards alternative models such as ‘commoditising services and multi-sourcing from alternative providers, including online.’

ContractStore’s most expensive English language contracts cost less than the time spent over a cup of coffee with a partner in a City law firm. And our links with smaller, specialist and innovative providers of legal services enable us to advise our customers on how to get the right legal advice at an affordable  price. 

So, if General Counsel want some savings on their legal bills, they can come to ContractStore for advice.