Air pollution is estimated to cause the equivalent of 40,000 early deaths in UK annually. It is a critically important issue in this region and elsewhere:
Despite this, many people don’t seem to realise they and their children are breathing some of the UK’s most polluted air.
Colmore Business Improvement District (BID) is working with Birmingham City Council to help raise awareness. They challenged us to ‘do something to improve our own and our fellow employees’ health’ and we were delighted to encourage people across the firm to consider ways to change their behaviour to reduce their contribution to air pollution.
This is not as straightforward as it may sound. Many of our employees already travel to work by public transport, on foot or by bike. Few drive into the office and most of those who do will be transporting files of sensitive correspondence to a client meeting, or have other good reasons for doing so. As a law firm with a social purpose, we are keen to encourage a meaningful response – it would mean little for those of us who already arrive using public transport to pledge to leave our cars at homes.
We are delighted that so many people chose to participate in National Clean Air Day and the picture above shows some of us who cycled to work. We hope that many will extend their efforts through the year – helping to make every day a clean air day.
Of course achieving real improvements to air quality will require action from local and national government and strong political leadership. In that context, we are delighted to say that the next in our occasional series of seminars on environmental themes will focus on air quality, with speakers from:
For further information
For more information or to register your interest in attending, please contact Shivaji Shiva.
The Prime Minister announced on Tuesday 22 September a new range of restrictions to protect us from the Covid crisis, some of which will apply to charities.
Following the end of the possession stay on 21 September, Helen Tucker & Rebecca Sembuuze from our housing litigation team discuss the most recent guidance, priority cases and what to expect in court.
Covid-19 has resulted, on the whole, in a marked co-operation between contracting authorities and their suppliers as everybody focuses on maintaining delivery as far as possible.
Employment Tribunal rules in favour of claimants in minimum wage case – has the interpretation of “working time” changed?
As we enter a recession, we have been here before, and a key question is what did we learn and how can we benefit from that learning?
It is anticipated that as lockdown restrictions ease, and particularly with children and young adults returning to education, cases of meningitis will start to rise.
As we continue to emerge from lockdown measures and deal with local measures and the short and long term economic impact of Covid-19, local authorities will need to re-assess how services will be delivered for years to come.
The Government first announced plans for a shared ownership right to buy in October 2019. At the time the sector raised concerns about the impact the plans would have on housing associations ability to borrow. An election and a pandemic later the Government announced, during the CIH Housing Festival last week, the return of the right to shared ownership as part of its Affordable Homes Programme (AHP).
Two final pieces of the possession jigsaw have been published on 15 September 2020. Mr Justice Knowles’ working group on possession proceedings has issued its guidance on the “overall arrangements” for possession proceedings.
One change proposed by the Building Safety Bill is the introduction of a duty holder regime, which will see statutory responsibility for the safety of higher risk buildings placed on key individuals
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