Private purpose trusts: a reform proposal

Argues for the introduction of statutory reform to enable valid private purpose trusts to be created by those wishing to make testamentary gifts for non-charitable purposes, with no human beneficiary. Examines the rationale employed in cases where the validity of a private purpose trust has been upheld despite the absence of a human beneficiary. Considers the approaches adopted by five offshore jurisdictions when introducing purpose trust legislation. Identifies key features to be included in any new purpose trust legislation introduced in the UK.

Can evidence-based healthy housing interventions be put into practice in the UK's private housing sector?

The UK’s public health agenda has encouraged enhanced housing and health interventions. The private housing sector (privately rented and owner occupied) is the favoured and majority UK tenure, but is it seen as a primarily health promoting environment, or a commercial asset? There has been a growing interest in integrating health and housing policy in recent years. However, housing and public health fall under separate government departments and funding regimes. Partnership working has sought to overcome silo working and encourage evidence-based practice, yet is particularly challenging for interventions in the private housing sector, with an increased emphasis on ‘personal responsibility’ for conditions. Strategic public health frameworks are in place, but barriers remain and there is pressure for organisations to revert to core activities. An accessible, continually updated evidence base specific to private sector housing is recommended, to help estimate health gain arising from interventions to prioritise activities and address inequalities.

Private equity and employment - the Davos/WEF/Harvard study

The World Economic Forum at Davos has published a major study showing that workplaces of firms taken over by private equity have 10% less employees 5 years after the takeover, than other similar workplaces. The rate of plant closures, opening, acquisitions and disposals is twice as high as in other firms, and the net effect is still a job loss of 3.6%-4.5% after only 2 years, compared with other firms. Firms taken over by private equity are also more likely to go bankrupt than publicly quoted firms.

Private equity: financial investors, public services, and employment

The report surveys the activity of private equity and other financial investors in the water, waste and healthcare sectors in Europe. It includes the appraisal of a WEF study on employment effects.

Public sector pay in the UK: has the historic pattern of public/private sector pay movements been broken?

The historic pattern of public sector pay movements in the UK has been counter-cyclical with private sector pay growth. Periods of relative decline in public sector pay against private sector movements have been followed by periods of ‘catch-up’ as Government controls are eased to remedy skill shortages or deal with industrial unrest among public servants. Public sector ‘catch up’ increases have therefore come at awkward times for Government, often coinciding with economic downturn in the private sector (Trinder 1994, White 1996, Bach 2002). Several such epochs of public sector pay policy can be identified since the 1970s. The question is whether the current limits on public sector pay being imposed by the UK Government fit this historic pattern or whether the pattern has been broken and, if so, how and why? This paper takes a historical approach in considering the context to public sector pay determination in the UK. In particular the paper seeks to review the period since Labour came into office (White and Hatchett 2003) and the various pay ‘modernisation’ exercises that have been in process over the last decade (White 2004). The paper draws on national statistics on public sector employment and pay levels to chart changes in public sector pay policy and draws on secondary literature to consider both Government policy intentions and the impact of these policies for public servants.

Integrating Land-use Planning and Transportation in Belfast: A New Policy Agenda for Sustainable Development

Much of the interest in promoting sustainable development in planning for the city-region focuses on the apparently inexorable rise in the demand for car travel and the contribution that certain urban forms and land-use relationships can make to reducing energy consumption. Within this context, policy prescription has increasingly favoured a compact city approach with increasing urban residential densities to address the physical separation of daily activities and the resultant dependency on the private car. This paper aims to outline and evaluate recent efforts to integrate land use and transport policy in the Belfast Metropolitan Area in Northern Ireland. Although considerable progress has been made, this paper underlines the extent of existing car dependency in the metropolitan area and prevailing negative attitudes to public transport, and argues that although there is a rhetorical support for the principles of sustainability and the practice of land-use/transportation integration, this is combined with a selective reluctance to embrace local changes in residential environment or in lifestyle preferences which might facilitate such principles.

Becoming private property: custom, law, and the geographies of ‘ownership’ in 18th- and 19th-century England

The making private of hitherto public goods is a central tenet of neoliberalism. From land in Africa, Asia, and South America to the assertion of property rights over genes and cells by corporations, the process(es) of making private property matters more than ever. And yet, despite this importance, we know remarkably little about the spatial plays through which things become private property. In this paper I seek to address this imbalance by focusing upon the formative context of 18th- and early-19th-century England. The specific lens is wood, that most critical of all ‘natural’ things other than land in the transition to market-driven economies. It is shown that the interplay between custom, law, and local practices rendered stable and aspatial definitions of property impossible. Whilst law was the key technology through which property was mediated, the cadence of particular places gave these mediations distinctive forms. I conclude that not only must we take property seriously, but we must also take the conditions and contexts of its making seriously too.

Inclusive development? State-led land development model in New Town, Kolkata

Urban land development in India is changing under the auspices of economic liberalisation. Kolkata has been in the forefront of this transformation through development of new townships in the urban peripheries based on a distinctive state-led land development model. Within this context New Town, Kolkata (also known as Rajarhat) provides a highly illuminative case to articulate the ways in which the state is implementing its neoliberal agenda in land development. It rides on political and ideological high ground by seeking to create a ‘model development’ of state–market partnership for dual goals of fostering capitalist interest while fulfilling welfarist principles. Interesting insights have emerged that point to a policy paradox. On one hand, the process follows market principles of efficacy and efficiency; on the other hand, state’s keenness to extend control persists, thereby creating a highly uneven terrain for state–market interaction. New Town reflects a typical quasi-market condition shaped by the monopolistic state, the poorly structured role of the private sector, an absence of civic bodies, and minimal land and housing provision for the poor. In India, as internationally, the economic liberalisation market ideology is increasingly construed as good governance. In this context New Town is a step in the right direction, but the progress is patchy, uneven, and still evolving.

The City as Laboratory and the Urban-Rural Divide: the Revival of Private Property and its Limits in Post-Mao China

This paper focuses on the revival of private property and its limits in urban China. It explores the emergence of urban property markets; urban property-holding in relation to the complexity of urban governance; “minor property rights apartments” that form a de facto real estate market and cross over the urban-rural divide; the “grey areas” of blurring legal and administrative boundaries in modern China; and recent changes to the rural land system and the rural-urban divide. The conclusion flags the theme of the city as laboratory with regard to the blurring legal and governmental urban-rural distinction.

The Triveneto transhumance: law, land, movement

North Italy's nomadic shepherds are a phenomenon unique in the world. Their nomadic nature is taken to the extreme since they move constantly rather than solely in the winter or the summer, as in the usual nomadism. Their home is on wheels and their territory is the tightly regulated yet sprawling Triveneto area. The Triveneto transhumance moves beyond private/public property divides, and indeed beyond lawful/unlawful distinctions, giving rise to what I have called an animal normativity. Relying on Valentina De Marchi's text 'Fame d'Erba' on the Triveneto transhumance, I show how territory becomes a question of animal hunger, and movement becomes an atmospheric, silent and imperceptible affect that crosses private property boundaries, state law limitations, reservation areas and road networks. This way of being, beyond the usual distinctions, offers an example of an alternative political and legal organisation that brings forth the continuum between the human, the natural and the legal/political.

Thomas Millard Senior land grant, 1797

Thomas Millard Senior was born in Middlesex, Connecticut, in 1728. He served as a Private with Butler’s Rangers. In July 1784, Thomas and his wife Mary, along with their 4 children, were on a list “to settle and cultivate the lands opposite Niagara”. He took the oath of allegiance at Niagara around 1784-85.

Catherine Everingham land grant, 1802 [photocopy]

Catherine (Lemon) Everingham was the widow of James Everingham, a private with the first Battalion of Colo Delancys Regt. of the Jersey Volunteers. He died in the American Revolutionary War in 1796, leaving his wife and two children settled on two hundred acres of land in the Township of Willoughby. No certificate had been awarded to James Everingham for this land. Catherine subsequently petitioned the government to grant her the land that she had settled on with her family.

Successful strategies for the implementation of land reform : a peasants’ account from the Philippines

Entre 1988 et 2008, les Philippines ont mis en oeuvre le Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) qui visait à redistribuer 9 million d‟hectares de terres agricoles aux paysans sans terre. En dépit des échappatoires du programme et d‟une structure sociale très inégale qui freinent sa mise en oeuvre, ce modèle de réforme agraire présente des résultats surprenants alors que 82% des terres ont été redistribuées. Concernant les terres plus litigieuses appartenant à des intérêts privés, Borras soutient que le succès surprenant de plusieurs cas de luttes agraires s‟explique par l‟utilisation de la stratégie bibingka qui consiste à appliquer de la pression par le bas et par le haut afin de forcer la redistribution. Sa théorie cependant ne donne que peu de détails concernant les éléments qui rendent un cas plus ou moins litigieux. Elle ne traite pas non plus de la manière dont les éléments structurels et l‟action collective interagissent pour influencer le résultat des luttes agraires. Dans ce mémoire, nous nous attardons d‟abord à la manière dont certains éléments structurels – le type de récolte et le type de relation de production - influencent le degré de résistance des propriétaires terriens face aux processus du CARP, contribuant ainsi à rendre les cas plus ou moins litigieux. Ensuite nous analysons l‟influence du contexte structurel et des stratégies paysannes sur le résultat de la mise en oeuvre du programme de réforme agraire. Pour répondre à nos deux questions de recherche, nous présentons quatre études de cas situés dans la province de Cebu.

Fragmentation or creative diversity? Options in the provision of land management advisory services

Rural land managers need access to sound advice and information to respond to pressures from environmental regulations, declining farm incomes, changing patterns in international trade and new institutional arrangements within the domestic food chain. Governments have cut back their provision of advisory services but need more than ever to influence land managers' decisions to achieve a growing array of policy objectives: The paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing advisory services and concludes, through a review of sixteen case studies, that the needs of both governments and land managers can be met by a diverse mixture of private and public sector provision. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.