Environment

We defend prosecutions and represent clients facing regulatory enforcement action in the Magistrates and Crown Courts. Our lawyers have represented clients before the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal in more than 100 appeals against civil penalties issued the by the Environment Agency.

We work closely with clients in reviewing the environmental aspects of their business, identifying legal and reputational risks and advising on risk management.

We’ve worked for government departments and environmental regulators and understand how they operate. This enables us to apply our experience and expertise to provide pragmatic and focussed advice.

Our environment expertise is recognised as leading or ‘tier one’ by the UK Legal 500 - an independent guide to the legal sector. 

Our environment experience includes:

• Advising on obtaining, and complying with, environmental permits and consents.
• Successfully negotiating enforcement undertakings with the Environment Agency and avoiding prosecution for alleged breaches of environmental permits.
• Advising on compliance with climate change regimes, including the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), the Climate Change Agreements (CCA) scheme and the Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases (F-Gas) regime. This includes successfully representing clients before the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal.
• Advising on the environmental aspects of business and property transactions, including environmental due diligence, drafting and negotiating environmental warranties and indemnities, appointing environmental consultants and managing complex contaminated land issues.
• Advising retail, manufacturer and importer clients on product stewardship and chemicals legislation, including packaging waste obligations, REACH, RoHS, PFAs, POPS, Energy-using Products design standards and labelling requirements. 
• Advising on Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations obligations, defending complaints made against clients to the Information Commissioner’s Office in the First-tier Tribunal, and advising on protecting commercially sensitive information from public disclosure.
• Active corporate members of the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association.