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08 September 2023 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 8039 / Categories: Features , Nuisance , Public , Local government
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Life in the loud lane

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Nicholas Dobson gets up to speed on statutory nuisance
  • Local authorities have the power to vary abatement notices issued under Part III of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

John Stuart Mill in his 1859 essay On Liberty asserted that: ‘The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’ ‘Nuisance’ is an ancient word (going back to the early 12th century and coming to us via Old French, ultimately from the Latin nocere, to harm or hurt), meaning injury, hurt, harm or something legally harmful or offensive. As was apparent from the Supreme Court judgment of 1 February 2023 in Fearn and others v Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023] UKSC 4, [2023] All ER (D) 02 (Feb) (see ‘Tate-à-Tête (Pt 3)’, NLJ, 17 March 2023, pp11-12), private nuisance refers to such actionable use of land as interferes with the claimant’s enjoyment of rights in land, such as to cause diminution in the utility

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NEWS
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NLJ this week: Divorce ‘nuclear weapon’ freezes assets but entangles outsiders
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
NLJ this week: What counts as ‘rent’? Court says labour alone won’t do
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
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Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
NLJ this week: Freed but failed—justice system leaves the innocent empty-handed
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
NLJ this week: Clarity on whistleblowing, settlements and tribunal limits
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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