Nicholas Dobson tackles Teckal
Back in June 2009 the Court of Appeal had declared unlawful the creation of a mutual insurance vehicle by Brent, Harrow and eight other London local authorities. The vehicle was London Authorities Mutual Limited (LAML). There were two essential limbs to the court’s decision. The first was that the authorities had no legal power to enter into such arrangements. And the second was that the authorities had breached the public procurement rules.
However, events have moved on. The previous government legislated to give authorities the powers they lacked in this context (see s 34 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009) with more local authority powers now on their way in the Localism Bill. And last month the Supreme Court ruled that the authorities had not in fact breached the public procurement rules (Brent London Borough Council and others v Risk Management Partners Ltd [2011] UKSC 7, [2011] All ER (D) 103 (Feb)).
Public Contracts Regulations 2006
Lord Hope (who gave the lead judgment) noted that the Public Contracts
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