Governance Blog Archive
Here you will find an archive of Governance Blog articles published before 1 May 2022, divided into their relevant categories.
Brexit
A referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU is to take place on Thursday 23rd June. Voters will be asked ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the…
Democracy and Government
The fifth Assembly election since the return of devolution in 1998 took place on 5 May 2016. The DUP consolidated its position as the largest party in Northern Ireland…
How might leaving the European Union impact on environmental policy, funding and legislation in Northern Ireland?…
This week has seen a number of announcements made which will have a bearing on the process of UK withdrawal from the EU….
Justice
In September 2021, Clare Bailey MLA introduced the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Bill to the Assembly. The Bill passed Second Stage on 12 October 2021 and would require…
In 2016 a man called Lance Hart shot his wife Claire and daughter Charlotte outside a swimming pool in Lincolnshire, England, before turning his shotgun on himself. Some of…
Last month, a new law came into force in England and Wales making upskirting a criminal offence. Upskirting involves taking a photo or video under a person’s…
Planning
This article explores the temporary planning measures introduced as a response to COVID-19 across the UK and Republic of Ireland (ROI). Some of these measures have, and will, require…
This blog article examines the similarities and differences between the planning systems north and south of the border on the island of Ireland. It is based on a more…
The planning system has undergone much change recently, so what are the new structures and how has the balance of responsibility shifted between central and local government?…
Statistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
The risk is that a complicated number is released without context into a world that doesn’t know how to think about it. The ‘R number’ that most of…
This is a follow-up to the recent blog article, ‘Where are we on the COVID-19 curve?. The previous article used three day averages for COVID-19 deaths to compare…
Most of us by now understand the need to ‘flatten the curve’ in order to reduce the number of overall cases of COVID-19 and to keep the peak…