Tag Archives: legal

Collaborative Law

This collaborative law initiative seems to be catching on, and I can certainly see why, if it does what it says on the tin. I’ve often met clients who have been disappointed with what mediation can offer them (I meet them at court once mediation has failed and they have fallen back on the court process). One of the reasons often cited by clients for the failure of mediation is that one or other of the parties has felt uncomfortable reaching an agreement when they haven’t had any legal advice (the other being that the other party has not entered into mediation in good faith and has tried to use it to bully the other into something unfair). This new approach seems to combine the best of mediation with the best of law. And leave out the adversarial part. Excellent news.

Has anyone tried this? Has it been positive?

Slough takes on giants

Slough has just successfully judicially reviewed the government in relation to the business growth money scheme (the government had wrongly refused to pay out extra funds to slough after it facilitated the growth of two major new businesses in Slough (Tesco Extra in Slough and Royal Mail sorting office in Colnbrook). And goodness only knows we ought to get SOMETHING positive as recompense for being forced to shop in the largest tescos in the solar system.

Also, much to my delight, the Competition Commission has ordered that Tesco downs tools on construction on its old site down the road from the gargantuan Tescos, whilst it conducts an inquiry. The complaint is that Tesco is hoarding the land and deliberately building units so small on it that the occupants will not effectively be able to compete with Super-Tesco. No? Tesco behaving in such a way? Unthinkable. Pah! 

And to complete the hat trick Slough is also still battling the Government about its population statistics, complaining that it has been given insufficient funding to cope with the infux of immigrants, particularly Poles who are arriving in Slough.