News

As Corporate Partners of The Sutton Trust, a leading organisation in the social mobility space in the UK, we were fortunate enough to have hosted work placements for 6 young individuals earlier this month.

We're delighted to have hired two experienced lawyers to further strengthen our growing Leeds office!

The new Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 (‘FSR’) are now in force.

Within the built environment, 2022 will be looked back upon as the year when building safety truly came to the fore: five years after London’s Grenfell tragedy, the Government ushered in its landmark Building Safety Act 2022 and new fire safety regulations come into force next month.

Earlier this month, the Government updated Chapter 7 of its Capital Funding Guide which sets out the rules and requirements for grant funded schemes (as well as occasional nil grant schemes) which grant recipients must follow.

We are delighted to have retained all of our newly-qualified solicitors for the fourth consecutive year.

The UK 2023 Chambers and Partners Legal Guide has been published, and we have maintained our Band 1 positions for Social Housing and Social Housing: Finance.

The Legal 500 United Kingdom 2023 recommend Devonshires as a Top-Tier Firm across a number of practice areas and mention over 30 of our key lawyers.

“UK Finance” (the banking trade body) has recently announced that six of the UK’s largest banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander) have agreed to offer mortgages on buildings with fire safety defects. This announcement, which is certainly welcome news to the sector, appears to be a radical reversal of lenders’ attitudes towards the risks in defective tall and mid-rise buildings.

The Fire Safety Act, having been introduced to Parliament in March 2020 and received Royal assent in April 2021, has finally come into force on 16 May 2022.

Following the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s initial recommendations on Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans, otherwise known as ‘PEEPs’, the Government ran a consultation on proposals for new legal requirements (to be imposed on owners and managers of multi-occupied high-rise residential buildings) to undertake PEEPs for residents in certain circumstances. The consultation also impacted on associated Government guidance on the issue.

Our recent article reported that there were rumours of the removal of the Building Safety Manager (“BSM”) role and the Building Safety Charge (“BSC”) from the draft Building Safety Bill (“BSB”). These rumours now appear to be substantiated by proposed amendments published by the Government.