Welcome to the FSP In-house Insight, where we highlight some of the key issues affecting in-house lawyers. In this issue we discuss:
- a whistlestop tour of recent employment law changes;
- beware the dangers of underinsuring your commercial property;
- anonymisation or pseudonymisation…it’s all Greek to me!;
- fraud! The new surrounding failure to prevent it;
- can technology revolutionise the residential conveyancing process?; and
- a story that must be true, because I read it on the internet.
If you require any further information on any of the areas, then please do not hesitate to contact Ian Machray, Head of Business Services: [email protected]/ +44 (0)7919 328122.
The financial year kicked off with some key changes to employment law (such as increase to statutory payment rates, minimum wage and national insurance), and the changes keep coming as we head towards 2026 (such as the expected coming into force of the Employment Rights Bill). Our Employment team provide a useful summary of the top 10 changes of which they think you should be aware here.
The recent Immigration White Paper also represents a seismic shift in immigration policy which will impact all businesses. Our Immigration team provide a summary of the implications here.
It is estimated that about 80% of commercial property in the UK is underinsured, but what does that really mean? Let’s imagine you own a commercial property worth £5m. You consider that it would cost about £2m to rebuild it if it were to be destroyed by fire. In reality, the actual cost of rebuilding would, if accurately assessed, be more like £4m. In this scenario, you are potentially invalidating your insurance and potentially left without any payout. Our Head of Real Estate (the largest Real Estate team in the Thames Valley area!) suggests building in the time and resource to carry out regular valuations and to keep your insurance company updated, here.
We’re all far too familiar with the UK GDPR and the requirements to minimise personal data. When personal data is truly anonymised (i.e. there can be no possible link between the data and which individual it came from) then the regulations of the UK GDPR will not take effect. However (by way of example), creating an alpha-numeric key code to personal data (that can potential be unravelled at later date) may simply by ‘pseudonymisation’, which is still subject to the UK GDPR. Our Commercial, IP and Technology team provides some guidance on issue, here.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) of 2023 comes into effect on 1 September 2025. Within it are laws that include new reporting and disclosure obligations on organisations. Failure to do so can have severe consequences under a new corporate criminal offence for failing to prevent fraud. Our Dispute Resolution team recently ran a webinar about the new requirements – if you missed it, it’s available here, along with their six key takeaways for businesses looking to ensure they don’t fall foul of the rules.
Can technology revolutionise the conveyancing process? Can buying and selling a house become easier and quicker? Well, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has set out to try to achieve these objectives. The really great news, however, is that FSP has joined the revolution! Our Residential team provide more details on this here.
AI use is becoming standard practise to increase the speed of research, but the importance of understanding AI’s limitations and requirement to test the outputs has been highlighted in the case of Ayinde v The London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1040, reported in the Law Gazette, here. The furore around this case does not involve the claimant nor defendant, but the legal representatives. The barrister and solicitors for the claimant cited non-existent cases in their submissions to the court. Sarah Forey of 3 Bolt Chambers, instructed by Haringey Law Centre, cited five non-existent cases, which did not make for a happy judge. The defendant barrister suggested that the only explanation for how the fake cases arose was that Forey had used artificial intelligence to create them. The judge was unable to make such a finding (because Forey had not ben cross-examined), but stated that it would be considered negligence if Forey had obtained texts from AI and failed to check them. Although the matter was successful for the claimants, the judge reduced the award by £7,000 and ordered the transcript be sent to the Bar Standards Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority due to this misconduct.
