HM Revenue & Customs has been granted leave to appeal to the House of Lords over the Arctic Systems case.

The Professional Contractors Group has put out a press release this morning announcing the news, saying that they would continue to support Geoff and Diana Jones, the husband and wife couple at the centre of the dispute.

'Our thoughts are with Geoff and Diana Jones, who have already spent more than two years going through the courts, and with all the family business owners who welcomed the Court of Appeal ruling in December and thought it would give them certainty. They now face a further journey to seek clarity and fairness in this landmark tax case,' said PCG chairman Simon Juden.

The revenue is also thought to have agreed at least to pay their own costs in the case, taking away some of the worry for Arctic and its advisers, who might have had to pay the Revenue's costs if they had lost, potentially running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

More soon.