This extended masterclass gives senior local government personnel a deeper and more practical grounding in the Subsidy Control regime, with a strong focus on real local authority projects and strategic decision-making. It goes beyond compliance to look in more detail at scenario analysis, risk mitigation, documentation, and audit-readiness, ensuring officers can confidently design and deliver funding interventions aligned with the law.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this extended session, participants will be able to:
Note: Participants who have already attended the Half-Day session may wish to attend this extended session to reinforce or detail their practical learnings through the extended interactive sessions.
Session Plan
|
Time |
Session |
Content & Approach |
|
9:30 – 9:45 |
Registration and Welcome |
Introductions, overview of objectives, current challenges facing councils. |
|
9:45 – 10:30 |
|
Legislative overview, why it matters for councils, powers and responsibilities. |
|
10:30 – 11:15 |
|
Working through typical council interventions (land, grants, business rates relief, infrastructure). |
|
11:15 – 11:30 |
Break |
|
|
11:30 – 12:15 |
|
Overview of the Principles: Interactive exercises (e.g. assessing regeneration and investment scenarios). |
|
12:15 – 1:00 |
|
Analysis of real-world examples (e.g., town centre redevelopment, SME support). |
|
1:00 – 1:30 |
Lunch Break |
|
|
1:30 – 2:15 |
|
How to meet legal obligations, prepare records, and manage challenge risk. |
|
2:15 – 2:40 |
|
Participants apply learning to their own or sample projects with facilitator feedback. Participants should come to the session prepared to share examples from their experience. |
|
2:40 – 2:45 |
Wrap-up and Evaluation |
Key takeaways, further guidance, and resources. |
Professor Suzanne Rab is a barrister at Matrix Chambers. She has over twenty five years of wide experience of EU law, competition law, and regulatory law including subsidy control and state aid law. Suzanne’s practice has a particular focus on the interface between innovation, trade and economic regulation. She acts in disputes involving governments, regulators and businesses across the regulated sectors including in the financial services, energy/environmental, healthcare/ pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, TMT and natural resources sectors.
Suzanne’s practice increasingly focuses on ensuring public authorities and challengers navigate the Subsidy Control Act 2022 effectively, from initial subsidy design through to potential actions before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. She regularly advises councils and government departments on applying the subsidy control principles, conducting assessments for minimum financial assistance and streamlined subsidy schemes, and structuring economic development initiatives to minimise legal risk. Her work often engages the relationship between domestic subsidy control, EU state aid principles, and the UK's international obligations under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. She appears before the Competition Appeal Tribunal in competition and in subsidy control challenges and judicial review proceedings, and provide strategic advice on transparency requirements, enforcement mechanisms, and interactions with public procurement law.
As a professor, she teaches competition law, bridging academic rigour with practical application. She has developed comprehensive training programmes public and private parties and their legal and policy teams, demystifying this complex regulatory landscape.
Prior to joining the bar, she has had roles as partner and head of regulatory practice with a leading US law firm and as director at PricewaterhouseCoopers working within its strategy, economics, and regulatory teams.
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09:30 - 14:45
Online
