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Against a backdrop of austerity, characterised by public-sector funding cuts and a devolutionary agenda, this paper aims to explore how legislation might address two inter-related challenges which public urban green space (“greenspace) faces in England and Wales, namely, responsibility for provision and identification of supporting funds. It focuses on two proposals: first, the introduction of legislative powers to enable local authorities to create user-charging schemes, and second, the imposition of a local authority statutory duty to provide greenspace.

Adopting a traditional doctrinal approach, this exploratory study provides a synthesis and analysis of statutory materials.

While the study considers debates around user-charging schemes, it suggests that the imposition of a statutory duty to provide greenspace would provide a more equitable and effective solution.

This paper calls for further research to establish the detail of such a statutory duty and how it might operate in practice.

There is an appetite amongst local authority stakeholders in England and Wales for such a statutory duty to better enable them to access the requisite underpinning funding.

Imposing a statutory duty would help in protecting the well-established social, economic and environmental benefits associated with greenspace.

This multi-disciplinary research considers the inter-relationship between two key greenspace challenges: responsibility for provision and funding. It identifies and evaluates a potential model for imposing a greenspace statutory duty, which could address some of these issues.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the financial and intellectual issues facing the university sector as many institutions in the UK pursue alternative revenue streams. As a consequence to the increasing financial pressures, university departments are increasingly exposed to new forms of potential litigation and also face the risk to the prestige of their university and departmental brand.

A theoretical and analytical approach is adopted whereby an introduction to the topic of revenue streams is presented before a review is conducted of the two most prominent and important streams available to the higher education sector – teaching and technology transfer. The paper furthers this analysis through a discussion of the accompanying legal consequences to UK universities and offers strategies to be adopted by such institutions to avoid these pitfalls.

The investigation has identified that the pursuit of additional sources of money from teaching and technology transfer pose significant risks and should only be considered after a rigorous analysis of the associated cost by institutional and departmental management structures.

The paper offers an insight into the experience of litigation and the intellectual problems encountered by university departments in the USA. This evidence is utilised to consider how it may provide UK‐based counterparts with a guide to avoid similar problems. It will be of relevance to practitioners, managers and strategic planners in the university sector.

In Ireland, the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015 provides a statutory framework to adults who are experiencing difficulties with decision-making. This legislation has significant implications for all who work in health and social care. Increasing age and life expectancy, alongside the rising incidence of chronic health conditions and dementia-related diseases, indicates that more individuals are likely to experience challenges regarding decision-making capacity. Therefore, the need for more consistent, best-practice processes to assess decision-making capacity is likely to increase. To ensure occupational therapists are responsible in their contributions, and to ensure those with disabilities are supported, clinicians must be well-informed of the principles underscoring the Act. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of this multidisciplinary issue, including recent legislation, and consider how occupational therapy can contribute.

The authors reviewed current literature and considered occupational therapy’s role in decision-making capacity assessment.

Occupational therapists have potential to play a key role in multi-disciplinary assessments of decision-making capacity for clients. Further research is required to explore professional issues, identify clinical best practices and determine training and resource needs.

This paper seeks to provoke consideration of how occupational therapists can contribute to capacity assessment from a client-centred, occupation-based perspective that is mindful of ethical and legislative considerations.

In a full blaze of comings and goings, it is unnecessary to remind ourselves that the holiday season is upon us; mass travel to faraway places. The media have for months, all through the winter, been extolling a surfeit of romantic areas of the world, exspecially on television; of colourful scenes, exotic beauties, brilliant sunshine everywhere; travel mostly by air as so‐called package tours — holidays for the masses! The most popular areas are countries of the Mediterranean littoral, from Israel to Spain, North Africa, the Adriatic, but of recent years, much farhter afield, India, South‐east Asia and increasingly to the USA.

An ageing population comes with its own set of challenges such as impaired financial capacity and resultant dependency on others to manage financial affairs. Dependency, in turn, as the evidence suggests, creates opportunities for financial exploitation of older adults. Related studies have primarily examined the clinical features and correlates of financial capacity or have attempted to develop its multidimensional measures. Both of which do little to resolve issues associated with impaired financial capacity. This paper aims to make a case for future researchers to assess older adults’ financial capacity from a non-clinical aspect.

Drawing on the notion of self-efficacy, as encapsulated within the social cognitive theory, this paper presents evidence from a host of different domains to demonstrate the potential contributions of self-efficacy to older adults’ financial capacity.

The contributions of self-efficacy in preserving older adults’ financial capacity appear to be much more profound than is currently acknowledged in the literature, thereby overlooking potentially promising and cost-effective interventions for autonomous ageing.

This paper presents a novel application of self-efficacy to autonomous ageing. Within this context, potential routes to the deployment of self-efficacy-based interventions are also discussed.

THE death of Sir John Ballinger was the cardinal library event of January. Elsewhere one of our contributors has gathered his memories of this distinguished past president of the Library Association. Here we pay tribute to a great librarian whose devotion to all that is best in the service was life‐long and who received honours which are not always given to librarians. Achieving a relatively important library position in early life, he not only gave his city an admirable service; he found time to work for all the general interests of the profession. The respect and gratitude, and indeed the affection, of all of us surrounded his later years and go with him to his grave. Our sympathy is respectfully expressed to Lady Ballinger and her family.

The purpose of this paper is to review extant literature and to provide perspectives on approaches to enhancing built environment sustainability in Africa. There is a mismatch between global societal resources and the increasing demand for natural resources. The consequences of this mismatch are prevalent in many African countries, causing the need to implement of built environment sustainability as a matter of cause.

Little research has been undertaken to date with a focus on the environmental sustainability of Africa. With this in mind the review was undertaken through a series of incremental steps. It began with an initial review, before developing through exploratory and development phases. The process culminated with the refined literature review presented.

The paper finds that a different approach is required to achieve built sustainable development for developed and developing countries, with a clear difference in terms of its application observed between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Current energy and water crisis facing Africa is brought to the fore and an evaluation is provided of the systems being used to ameliorate its effects. The study explores a range of technological solutions that are appropriate for consideration in the African context. It also examines the barriers that need to be overcome to facilitate the widespread use of the suggested solutions in Africa.

This study examines built environment sustainability through the Africa lens. It highlights its importance and the contextual factors inhibiting the widespread uptake of built environment sustainability solutions. The study offers a number of recommendations for the future to encourage long-term built environment sustainability in Africa and more specifically the Sub-Saharan region.