Welcome to the January edition of the Property and Infrastructure e-bulletin.  This month’s edition:

• considers the proposals for the construction of the new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham, which will undoubtedly be one of the major UK infrastructure projects of this generation;
• reviews the provisions of the re-introduced The Long Leases (Scotland) Bill;
• reports on the Scottish Government consultation on Protective Expenses Orders, in the wake of number of public interest cases last year, in which individuals and organisations mounted judicial challenges to local authority planning proposals and decisions; 
• looks at the provisions of the revised pre-action dilapidations protocol published by the Property Litigation Association, which represents best practice to be followed in the early stages of terminal dilapidations claims relating to commercial property in England and Wales;
• discusses the difficulties that can be faced when a dispute arises and the contract does not meet the criteria required by the legislation, in the light of two English cases of Sharma v Simposh Limited and Francis v F Berndes Limited;
• highlights the conflicting principles of the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Land Registration Act 2002 in the context of the recent High Court case of Pick v Chief Land Registrar.