What is the current guidance for court of protection hearings?

You can claim for regular payments you are obliged to pay staff such as non-discretionary overtime, non-discretionary fees, non-discretionary commission and piece-time payments. Overtime in this context is referred to as ‘past overtime’ in the updated guidance which would suggest that you should use the variable pay calculation (see FAQ above) for those who regularly carry out overtime.

Our advice to you here is simple. It will depend on the circumstances surrounding your debt but for the most part, unless it is crystal clear that there has been a debt outstanding long before Covid-19 and there was an inability to pay prior to the Covid situation we would recommend that you hold off issuing any further petitions until after the 31st December. Unless the criteria set out above is met, a judge is likely to exercise their discretion leniently and could dismiss the petition. This could also lead to cost consequences which would adversely affect you.

We are happy to discuss individual cases to assist creditors at this difficult time, however, generally any cases proceeding to petition would be the exception as opposed to the rule. Even if presenting a winding up petition is not available for now, there may still be other forms of legal proceedings that you can use to collect money owed to you, like county court proceedings.

The best advice is that parties should proceed as they would have done before the crisis began.

Local government legislation formerly stipulated that councillors must be physically present to vote and this requirement has already led to the widespread cancellation of Council meetings.  There is a limit to what can be achieved under the chair’s emergency powers and delegation to officers.

The Government has now legislated to allow for remote voting until 7 May 2021. The secondary legislation required was issued in draft on 2 April and has been in force since Saturday 4 April.

The legislation allows for committee meetings to go ahead where members and any members of the public attending remotely can all times “hear (and where possible see) and be heard (and where possible be seen) by the other members in attendance”.

It remains to be seen how many local authorities take up the opportunity to hold a virtual committee meeting. Concern has been expressed that the demographic of local councillors may mean that members have difficulty with the technological mechanisms for holding such meetings. However, the message from the Secretary of State is clear that wherever possible, the planning system should keep moving in these current times.

There are four criteria which must be satisfied if an agreement is to be considered exempt:

• It must improve production or distribution, or promoting technical or economic progress – the guidance suggests that cooperation ensuring essential goods and services can be made available to the public, or an important sub-set of the public such as key workers, will satisfy this criterion.
• It must allow consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit – the guidance suggests this will be the case where the action prevents or reduces shortages.
• It must not impose on the undertakings concerned restrictions which are not indispensable to the attainment of the above benefits – the guidance suggests this will be the case where the cooperation is the only reasonable option due to the urgency of the crisis and where the cooperation is temporary in nature.
• It must not afford the undertakings concerned the possibility of eliminating competition – therefore the parties must endeavour to retain competition in respect of the products (in particular price competition).