In the press
Selling illegal skin lighteners costs trader £40,000
Janson Limited of East Dulwich, and its Directors Riyaz and Alimohamed Janmohamed, were fined a total of £25,000 and ordered to pay costs of £15,228 for supplying skin lighteners containing the banned ingredient ...
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Grunting neighbours
Although grunting is not a specific offence under English law, a 36-year-old bodybuilder was fined £70 at a magistrates’ court in Kent after his workouts became intolerable to his neighbours. Giran Jobe’s grunting during his regular two-hour sessions ... was so bad it reached as much as 100 decibels, according to monitors installed by the local council. In other words, as loud as the noise on the platform of a Tube station as a train arrives. Jobe was fined ...
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Court fines bird flu case farmer
A Suffolk farmer whose business was at the centre of a bird flu outbreak has been fined £4,000 for breaching regulations during the crisis.
Geoffrey Buchanan, 38, a director of Gressingham Foods, based in Debach, admitted eight offences relating to the storage and movement of carcasses.
Magistrates in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, sat late into the evening to sentence Buchanan. He was also ordered to pay ...
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5am music fan evicted
A MAN who made his neighbour's life a misery by playing loud pop music into the early hours has been booted out of his council flat.
Steven Roberts, 26, lost his home after Salford council received 61 complaints from a neighbour who had to endure his `all-nighters'...
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Licensing Scheme for Knife Dealers
The Scottish Government are proposing to introduce a new licensing scheme for dealers of knives. The proposals are a key part of the Government’s reform of knife crime law and are a vital component of a wider package of measures designed to tackle knife crime and violence more generally ...
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Landmark Ruling regarding old convictions held on PNC
In a landmark ruling the Information Tribunal has dismissed appeals by Humberside, Northumbria, Staffordshire, Greater Manchester and West Midlands Police and ruled that the retention of the old convictions data is in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 ...
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CCTV Bill Introduced
A Private Members Bill regarding CCTV has been introduced before Parliament. The Bill, which is due to have its second reading before the House of Commons on 17 October ...
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Retention of Communications Data
The government has published a draft bill relating to retention of communications data, which extends to internet data. If this bill is approved by both Houses of Parliament, it will come into force on 15th March 2009.
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Formal Caution or Simple Caution
Cautions are not only used by the police, but DWP and Local Authorities, and the details of those cautioned are kept on a national DWP database. It is for low level crime where there is evidence to support a prosecution, and the offender has admitted the offence. There is now a new circular that provides guidance and changes to the term 'Simple Caution'.
For more information and download circular
New Local Area Agreements
The results of a comprehensive shake up of council targets and priorities have been published and show the pattern of issues across England that councils will have to deal with over the next three years. The Government has more than halved local targets for councils from over 100 to just 35 to ensure more rigorous focus on what matters to local people and reduce bureaucracy.
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Licensing Act has no impact on drink-fuelled violence for most
A survey by the Local Government Association, in relation to 24 hour licensing Laws has found that it has cost the taxpayer £100 million and failed to reduce the number of alcohol fuelled disorders.
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Passport Validation Service for the public sector
The Identity and Passport Service provides a Passport Validation Service (PVS) which allows government agencies to find out if a passport is a valid issue – i.e. is the passport holder allowed to travel and whether the passport is valid as evidence of identity. This would be useful in relation to employment vetting and use of the document as a form of identification, reducing fraud by identifying fraudulent and counterfeit passports. The database is referred to as Omnibase.
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Test Purchasing - RIPA or not?
Despite Home Office guidance, there is still much confusion in relation to test purchasing and the need for RIPA authorisation in relation to directed covert surveillance and covert human intelligence source.
For more information and download guidance
Regulating the Regulators - New Compliance Code of Practice
A new code is set to offer comprehensive guidelines to help regulators improve their practices and results.
The Regulators’ Compliance Code, which has been issued by the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), came into force in April... read article
Inappropriate for fire investigators to caution under Fire Services Act
Comments by your contributor Dominic Goble (FP FEJ, June and September) about cautioning suspects under PACE by Fire Officers got my alarm bells ringing...
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Extracts of this article have been published in:
Fire Prevention Fire Engineers Journal – November 2006