Bradley Fried has been appointed as Chair of the Court of the Bank of England, with effect from 1 July 2018. He will replace Sir Anthony Habgood who has been Chair since 2014. Bradley has been a non-executive director at the Court of the Bank of England for six years.

Diana Noble and Anne Glover will also join the Bank’s governing body as non-executive directors.

The Governor, Mark Carney said:

I am delighted that Brad Fried has agreed to take on this vital and demanding role for the Bank. He will build on the strong foundations established by Anthony Habgood over the past four years. Anthony overhauled the Bank’s governance and improved the workings and transparency of Court, leaving behind him a body that is well positioned to guide the Bank for years to come.

I also welcome the appointment of Diana Noble and Anne Glover to Court. The depth and range of their private sector experience will be major assets to Court’s oversight of the Bank’s activities. I would also like to thank Tim Frost for his many contributions to Court and its Committees over the past six years.

Dido Harding, Don Robert and Dorothy Thompson have been reappointed as non-executive directors for a further term. Tim Frost will step down as non-executive director on 31 May 2018.

About the Court

The Court of the Bank of England is the governing body responsible for managing the affairs of the Bank, outside the formulation of monetary policy. The Court’s responsibilities include determining the Bank of England’s objectives and strategy, and ensuring the effective discharge of the Bank’s functions and the most efficient use of its resources.

Its members are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The appointment and reappointment processes are regulated by the Office for the Commissioner of Public Appointments. All appointments to the Court are made on merit and all appointees have confirmed that they have not engaged in any political activity in the last five years.

About the appointees

Bradley Fried

Bradley Fried has been a non-executive director at the Court of the Bank of England since 2012. Before his appointment as Chairman, he was Deputy Chairman of the Court and Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee. He is a co-founder of Grovepoint, prior to which he was Chief Executive Officer of Investec Bank plc.

Bradley is currently a non-executive director on the board of the Financial Conduct Authority and Payment System Regulator. Following this announcement, he will step down from both positions.

Diana Noble

Diana Noble is a non-executive director at the Business Growth Fund, a position she has held since 2016. She was CEO of CDC Group plc between 2011 and 2017, and Executive Vice President of the Clinton Foundation’s Health Access Initiative. She began her career in Private Equity as a partner at Schroder Ventures which became Permira.

Anne Glover

Anne Glover is Co-founder and CEO of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited. She is a member of both the Council for Science and Technology, and London Business School’s Private Equity Institute Advisory Board. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering In 2006, she was awarded a CBE for Services to Business.

Diana ‘Dido’ Harding

Diana Harding is currently a non-executive director on the Bank of England’s Court of Directors and Chair of the Bank’s Remuneration Committee. She sits in the House of Lords as a Conservative peer and is a member of the Lord’s Economic Affairs Select Committee. She is a trustee of Doteveryone and a member of the UK National Holocaust Foundation Board.

Dido was Chief Executive of TalkTalk Telecom Group plc from 2010 to May 2017 and before this worked in a range of business roles.

Don Robert

Don Robert joined the Court of the Bank of England as a non-executive director in July 2014.
He currently serves as non-executive Chairman of Experian plc. He has held previous executive roles with First American Corp and Credco Inc.

Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson was CEO of Drax Group plc from September 2005 up to December 2017. She is also a non-executive director of Eaton Corporation plc and chair designate of Tullow Oil.

Before joining Drax, Dorothy worked for InterGen, an independent power company. Dorothy started her career in development banking, working for the Commonwealth Development Corporation in the UK and Malaysia and the National Development Bank of Botswana in Botswana.

Further information

Bradley Fried, Diana Noble, Don Robert and Dorothy Thompson have confirmed that they have not engaged in any political activity in the last five years. Anne Glover has declared that she has undertaken activity for Democrats Abroad, and that she donated $10,000 to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. Dido Harding has declared that she takes the Conservative Whip in the House of Lords. She has also declared that she has donated around £2,000 to the Conservative Party over the last seven years, and that she is married to the Conservative MP, John Penrose.

The gender breakdown for this appointment is below:

The European Commission is proposing a new exception from infringement of supplementary protection certificates (SPC), which protect medicines. SPCs are national IP rights provided for by EU regulations. A draft proposal for a Regulation was published on 28 May 2018. This Regulation aims to amend Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products.

The Intellectual Property Office welcomes views on the draft legislative proposal.

For further information, including a link to the European Commission Press Release, view the IPO News item

UK Research and Innovation has up to £50 million each for place-based consortia to work together, build on existing research and innovation capabilities and grow the local economy.

Businesses and research organisations that are located closely together can collaborate with local partners on research and innovation projects that create an economic improvement in a particular geographic area.

This is part of the Strength in Places Fund, announced in the Industrial Strategy white paper. The fund will tackle the regional disparities across the UK and grow prosperous communities.

A 2-stage application

The competition is being run in 2 phases.

In this first phase, we are seeking expressions of interests that set out plans for large collaborative consortia. There is up to £50,000 each for consortia in ‘seed corn’ funding, which is money invested in a project at the beginning with the intention that this will produce a profit.

Successful projects will then be invited to bid in a second phase. Individual consortia can get up to £50 million to develop full-scale proposals. Projects in this phase are expected to start in June 2019 and complete by April 2024.

Competition information

• the competition is open, and the deadline for expressions of interest is at midday on 25 July 2018
• there is up to £50,000 each for consortia in the first phase, and between £10 million and £50 million each in the second phase to develop your project further
• a business, university, research institute, Catapult centre or research and technology organisation can lead a project
• consortia must include at least one business and one research organisation. Other members could include local civic partners including Local Enterprise Partnerships, combined authorities, enterprise bodies and other, similar economic agencies
• briefing events will be held throughout May and June 2018

We have updated our application forms to include revised privacy notices following the rollout of new data protection legislation on 25 May 2018.

Which application forms are affected?

All our civil and crime application forms. Also, crime eForms.

Why do we have privacy notices?

Privacy notices set out certain standards which your clients can expect from the Legal Aid Agency regarding personal data.

Among the areas covered are:

• our requests for personal data and the way it is managed

• how to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold

• what to do if your client thinks standards are not being met

Will old forms still be accepted?

Previous versions of these forms will continue to be accepted in the coming weeks so that providers have time to adjust. But we would prefer you to use the new versions.

Show all clients updated privacy notices

Your clients need to be aware of the updated privacy notices. This is especially important if you are submitting the older version of the form.

It means directing your clients to the new privacy notices when you are collecting personal information.

These privacy notices are on the new forms and you can use the links at the end of this article to help you.

CCMS privacy notices

We are working on integrating privacy notices into the Client and Cost Management System (CCMS).

Until this happens CCMS users need to refer to the privacy notice available for download on the supporting guidance page for civil legal aid application forms. This was explained in our news article on 23 May 2018.

Why is this necessary?

These changes are part of a comprehensive review of our processes and systems in response to the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

What is GDPR?

GDPR legislation came into force on 25 May 2018 and is the biggest change to data protection rules for 20 years. The aim is to harmonise data privacy laws across the European Union.

Keeping you informed

Future updates on GDPR and privacy notices will be published on the legal aid news pages on GOV.UK.

These will include letting you know when the new CCMS privacy notice has been integrated into the system.

Further information

Updated forms:

Civil legal aid application forms

Controlled work application forms

Criminal legal aid application forms

CCMS privacy notice:

Civil legal aid application forms: supporting guidance – to download ‘civil legal aid applications privacy notice’

CCMS news story:

Civil news: use revised privacy notice for CCMS applications – GOV.UK article 23 May 2018

The one-year trial, for the 2018 to 2019 funding year, will enable more eligible adults to access AEB funding.

This will help to increase AEB participation and lift social mobility barriers to learning for those who would not otherwise engage due to course fees being unaffordable. It will also support those who have been motivated to move out of unemployment and are in receipt of a low wage to further progress in work and their chosen career.

The current AEB fee remission rules focus on providing full funding for eligible unemployed adults, young people (aged 19 to 23) with skills below level 2, and adults aged 19 and over, without English and maths up to level 2. Currently individuals who do not fall into one of these categories may have to contribute 50% towards the cost of their learning (commonly known as co-funding).

The new eligibility requirements for learners to receive full funding during the trial are:

• those that are eligible for co-funding, and,
• earn less than £15,736.50 annual gross salary based on the Social Mobility Commission’s low pay threshold of £8.07 (hourly rate in 2016) and on the assumption of a 37.5 hour contract with paid statutory holiday entitlement

To confirm learner eligibility providers must:

• see and keep supporting evidence in the learner file, for example, this could be a wage slip within 3 months of the learner’s learning start date, or a current employment contract, which states gross monthly/annual wages)
• enter the ILR monitoring code (363) for every eligible learner they fully fund through this trial, his is imperative as we will use data collected from this trial to inform future adult funding policy development

We have engaged with representative bodies, Mayoral Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority, who have been supportive of the trial and it’s aims to make learning more accessible for the low paid.

The rules associated with the trial are in version 1 of the adult education budget (AEB) funding rules 2018 to 2019.