Planning and Environment
Cornerstone Barristers has some of the most highly regarded barristers in the planning and environment sector. Our barristers combine specialist expertise with exceptional market knowledge to deliver strategic legal solutions. From our offices in London, Birmingham and Cardiff we advise a wide range of clients from large property developers and public bodies through to small businesses and individuals.
Our barristers are regularly involved in planning enforcement appeals and inquiries, development plan inquiries and in planning challenges before the law courts at all levels.
Our knowledge spans the full spectrum of planning and environment issues, including related areas such as public law, property, energy, and local government law. We are specialists in compulsory purchase and compensation cases.
Particular expertise includes:
- Local plans
- Green Belt and countryside
- Housing
- Compulsory purchase and compensation
- The historic environment
- Retail and commercial development
- Highways and transport infrastructure
- Energy and renewables
- Fracking
- Minerals and waste
- Habitats and species protection
- Environmental impact assessments / Strategic environmental assessments
- Commons, town and village greens
- Rights of way
Our barristers have experience acting across multiple business sectors, including development, infrastructure, energy and leisure, often acting on major inquiries and nationally significant matters.
Recently this has included:
- The rejection of four onshore wind farms following Wales’s longest ever planning inquiry;
- Challenges to highly controversial proposals concerning fracking sites in Lancashire;
- Conjoined challenges over significant basement developments in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; and
- The HS2 railway Hybrid Bill.
The team is the leading authority on planning issues and recently published the Second Edition of Cornerstone on the Planning Court. The book provides a detailed review and analysis of the work of the Planning Court, as well as a practical and tactical guide to planning judicial review and related statutory challenges.
Cornerstone holds an annual Planning Day conference (around November) which is highly popular among planning specialists, solicitors and policymakers. The conference features a series of talks from the majority of the team alongside lunch and post-conference drinks. See highlights from Planning Day 2023 below and purchase the catch-up package here.
News
- Josef Cannon appointed King’s Counsel18 Mar 2024
- In final case as a Junior, Josef Cannon appears at the Court of Appeal12 Mar 2024
- Emmaline Lambert and Johanna Boyd named as Women of Influence by RTPI’s The Planner08 Mar 2024
- Examination into Gatwick Expansion Begins28 Feb 2024
- Cornerstone Climate Month: Training and Insights on Climate for the Legal Profession28 Feb 2024
Cases
- Bibby Stockholm: Nina Pindham appears for Secretary of State in High Court27 Feb 2024
- Court of Appeal clarifies the ambit of Welsh Ministers’ powers over coal mining23 Feb 2024
- Emmaline Lambert and Emma Dring advocate for critical highways infrastructure at Inquiry22 Feb 2024
- Flood risk: The sequential test and the relationship between PPG and NPPF13 Feb 2024
- High Court to hear significant statutory challenge against refusal of planning permission to demolish and rebuild M&S Oxford Street store13 Feb 2024