What can I do for you?
I’m a consultant in the planning and environment team. Many environmental lawyers spend their days chained to a desk, scrutinising due diligence documents in land and business deals. I do this some of the time, but because we have such different types of clients (quarry companies to farmers; local authorities to waste management companies), I also deal with many freestanding environmental jobs. This includes environmental permitting applications as well as prosecutions and defences, including interviews under caution, when planning, environmental and health and safety rules are breached.
Supporting my clients’ aims
Two recent cases show how critical this area of law is (and why it is fascinating to work in). In one, a waste management company needed a solution to a particularly trying environmental permitting issue so that its managers could get back to their day job. We were able together to achieve a solution which is workable both legally and from a practical point of view. In another, we worked for several months with a local authority regulator which had to decide whether to issue an environmental permit for a large and controversial proposal. We worked as part of the authority’s team so as to support officers in making a clear and legally-robust decision.
What do others say?
I really want to be a part of my client’s team and it is encouraging that Chambers UK includes comments from clients that we show “real skill in guiding clients over environmental hurdles”, we are “supportive” and “commercially savvy” and give “excellent value for money”. Legal 500 quotes a client describing the team as “supportive, pragmatic, focused” and that is certainly what we always aim to be.
What else should you know?
I belong to the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management and United Kingdom Environmental Law Association, which help me keep clients abreast of the latest news and developments in the ever-changing sea of environmental regulation. I also sit as an ad hoc member of the CBI Minerals Group, allowing me to get involved in commentary on their regulations, guidance and procedure relating to the transposition of the Mining Waste Directive in England and Wales.