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An ambitious reform programme in the UK to digitalise the justice system has been underway since 2016. The recent report carried out for the Administrative Justice Council (AJC) by the authors Digitisation andAccessingJustice in theCommunity, described how prepared advice providers were for giving digital assistance concerning welfare benefits, and found that organisations were unable to meet the demand for services across all levels of social welfare law, and that there was a high level of demand for digital assistance. This paper then adds data from the follow up Welfare Advice Survey carried out for the JUSTICE/AJC benefits reform working party by the authors, which examines the technical capability of the advice sector to provide remote social welfare advice delivery after the onset of the pandemic (see fns 1 and 3 below). The paper describes how advice providers have been working during the first seven months of the pandemic in 2020 and how the migration to remote advice delivery has changed their services and impacted on their clients. A conceptual framework of needs is then developed and offered as a lens through which to think about the new sets of demands on advisers and clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the response of the English heritage sector, in particular Historic England, to the impact caused by the initial lockdown and restrictions introduced to protect lives during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. This response, headed by the Heritage Sector Response Group, relied on effective cross-sector working in order to both make the case for targeted support for the heritage sector to the UK Government and to provide advice and support for organisations during the lockdown and the limited reopening of the economy which followed. This included gathering intelligence in order to understand the impact of restrictions on the sector, which was used to swiftly develop emergency grant schemes funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England. The paper also considers the Historic England Heritage Online Debate around the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the sector, which gathered case studies from across the sector to capture and share qualitative information. The paper then looks at other long term challenges facing the sector, such as climate change, and considers how a collaborative approach and lessons learned from the sector's response to the COVID-19 restrictions may provide models for building resilience for the future and developing solutions to other issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of COVID-19 have been telling in the sports world, seeing competitions suspended indefinitely. Initial optimism in England – that the Premier League would resume in May – dampened in favour of caution. In the absence of play and catastrophic economic losses, wealthy managers and executives have been encouraged, from a financial perspective, to accept wage freezes and reductions. Players have also been encouraged to do so as part of an effort in solidarity. This paper considers the ethical dimension of such gestures and how these have been received. How is the footballer, rendered physically incapable in such circumstances to prove sporting worth, to be critiqued? A new pandemic morality, it is argued, has emerged, one that takes an austere view of footballers and their conduct. Appraised as such, these figures are seen less as heroic beings than citizens engaged in a common cause and reviled for not doing so, a return, it is contended, to the principle of amateurishness. Specific reference is made to the English Premier League to illustrate the point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and evaluate how prison administrators in England and Wales responded to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the United Kingdom (UK) in late January 2020. In the days that followed, the number of positive cases grew exponentially; by the end of March thousands of new cases were detected daily and several hundred people had died of COVID-19. In response to the pandemic crisis, Prime Minster Boris Johnson mandated a national lockdown on March 23 and prison administrators were told to immediately begin implementing Exceptional Regime Management Plans. These Plans included (1) strategies to minimize the risk of transmission of the virus within prisons, (2) measures to reduce the potential for the virus to enter prisons, and (3) methods to manage prison populations in order to contain the virus. Overall, 6 months into the coronavirus crisis, the adopted measures appear to have helped curtail the spread of the virus within prisons, but at a great cost to the inmates and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]