Today’s post is a guest post from Teny Kuti, a first-year student in Aston University’s Law School. The post discusses the various effects of the forthcoming HS2 high-speed rail link, as well as some of the potential consequences moving forward. Please follow Teny via Twitter here , and his own blog The Whole Spectrum for an interesting take on a number of different issues, ranging from politics to business. Frequently described as the most substantial rail project ever built in the UK set to open in 2026, High speed rail 2 will form a high-speed link between Birmingham and London, reducing the travel time to 49 minutes. However, the project has never been shy of controversy. Since the HS2 received Government approval in 2012, it has seen strong opposition from those who would lose their homes on the current plans and indeed, HS2 Ltd has claimed that 1,740 buildings would be destroyed by the rail line, with nearly 900 being homes. Now with the recent developments such as the C

Back in August 2017 we looked at the concept of the ‘private finance initiative’, and also the differences between ‘public private partnerships’ and ‘private finance initiatives’, which has also been dissected in the literature . We looked at the issue of Carillion and the aspects that underpinned its high-profile collapse. However, for this post, the question will be whether the recent developments at Interserve, the massive provider of public services in the UK, is part of a general trend or an indication of a fundamental flaw within the model that is being adopted currently. Interserve began as London and Tilbury Lighterage Company Limited in the late 1800s, and through a number of phases of expansion over the century and more that followed, the company was renamed Interserve Plc in 2001. The company has a global reach, but for this post our focus will be on its role within the UK, where its function is particularly vital. According to Interserve itself, it has reported

As is the remit of Financial Regulation Matters , it should not be surprising that analysing financial regulators is of key concern for this blog. In doing that, however, we get to see the diverging experiences of a financial regulator, and how differing approaches yield very different results. We have examined a number of regulators throughout the years in this blog, and two have factored heavily in our analyses. Today, we revisit the two particular stories which have evolved recently and left the respective regulators facing a number of criticisms. The SFO’s Pursuit of Tesco Directors Fails We examined the case of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launching proceedings against three Tesco Executives back in February. Then we discussed how the SFO were alleging that fraud by abuse of position, and false accounting were the crimes of Carl Rogberg, John Scouler, and Christopher Bush. That post asked whether the SFO would continue in their pursuit, and shortly afterwards it was