Features

The Inner House of the Court of Session has issued an important decision in the appeal of Glasgow City council v X. It relates to the duty on local authorities to provide accommodation for homeless persons – that the duty to provide temporary accommodation is less onerous than the duty to prov

Housing minister Paul McLennan discusses the importance of the short term let licensing scheme in Scotland, looking at its benefits to tourism and local economies, and addressing potential safety and housing availability risks. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending a weekend celebrating my

A law firm in Glasgow’s Southside is expanding as it acquires a long-established practice in the city. MacDonald Lynch, based in Mount Florida, has announced the acquisition of Archer Coyle, a family firm of solicitors located in the Muirend area of the city.

There is no doubt that the UK is one of the best locations for wind power in the world – and there’s been significant investment to capitalise on that energy advantage. At present it has over 11,000 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 28 gigawatts (GW) and aspires to secure

Practitioners and medical professionals alike will be interested to note the recent judgment of the Sheriff Appeal Court in McCallum v Morrison, 2023 in which the pursuer’s appeal against the dismissal of a psychiatric injury claim following a dentist’s failure to follow adequate infecti

It is becoming increasingly common for businesses to face civil penalties of around £1m or more for breaching UK export control laws. Export control breaches are criminal offences, but the 1979 Customs and Excise Management Act allows HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to "compound" offences and of

Angus MacLeod, a solicitor who specialises in the spirits industry, has spoken about the challenges currently being faced by the Scotch whisky sector after conducting an analysis of the industry’s production, sales, and global reputation, and discussed the strategies that can be employed to ov

There is no shortage of books about some politicians but Winston Churchill seems to be in a separate category from the others. When Churchill: Walking With Destiny (Allen Lane, 2018) by Andrew Roberts (now Lord Roberts of Belgravia) was published that biography, at 1,105 pages, was said to be the 1,

Many urban readers will be unfamiliar with the idea of Muirburn and may indeed be shocked to learn that planned burning of heather and grass moorland occurs every year across rural Scotland, particularly in light of the recent spate of catastrophic wildfires. However, this practice has for centuries

Ronnice Clancy KC takes an expert look at the Rwanda case. There were 55 counsel instructed in the recent English Court of Appeal case in which the UK government’s Rwandan Asylum scheme was held, on a 2-1 split decision, to be unlawful. No wonder the court’s 161-page judgement is a chall

On Thursday 29 June 2023, the Crown Office’s request to extradite Richard Sharples for serious offences – alleged to have happened in Scotland in September 2021 – called before Mr Justice Paul McDermott in the High Court of Ireland, writes Thomas Ross KC. The application was oppose

The Scottish Sentencing Council has recently produced a report advocating shorter prison sentences even for some serious offences. There would be more emphasis on community-based disposals, such as community payback orders which used to be called community service orders. The report suggest the poss

A psychonaut, according to a dictionary, is someone who explores altered states of consciousness, especially through hallucinatory drugs. The term apparently originates from 1970 when one author described the psychedelic, drug-induced experiences with his friend. Mike Jay is a historian of

Stefanie Johnston, Iain Franklin and Imogen Webb from Ince & Co's London and Scotland offices consider TUI Ltd v Griffiths (Supreme Court Appeal from [2021] EWCA Civ 1442), given its implications for UK-wide practice. The Supreme Court has heard an important case on the courts’ approach to

It could have been a rerun of Clochemerle, that droll 1970s Simpson and Galton series about the hotly disputed provision of a public pissoir in an ultra respectable French village. In 2021 Miranda Dickson inherited her three story townhouse in Edinburgh’s Drummond Place from her parents, Ian a