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.
Planning Day – 6 November 2023
Cornerstone holds an annual Planning Day conference which is highly popular among planning specialists, solicitors and policymakers. Tickets for Planning Day 2023 are now on sale. The conference will be held on 6 November November at the Royal College of Surgeons and features a series of talks from the majority of the team alongside lunch and post-conference drinks. The programme can be found here.
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News
- Cornerstone Barristers welcomes Lois Lane as a new tenant of Chambers after completion of a 12-month pupillage02 Oct 2023
- Latest news on Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and the State of Nature29 Sep 2023
- Boom Power granted permission for Solar Farm on Essex Green Belt site13 Sep 2023
- Clare Parry returns to Chambers following maternity leave11 Sep 2023
- Tom Cosgrove KC and Ruchi Parekh are shortlisted at the Chambers UK Bar Awards 202311 Sep 2023
Cases
- Secretary of State refuses consent for London Bridge tall buildings scheme due to heritage harm to assets “of the highest significance”22 Sep 2023
- If a claim for planning statutory review is filed on time but served out of time because it is issued out of time, the court has no jurisdiction to entertain it.14 Sep 2023
- Boom Power granted permission for Solar Farm on Essex Green Belt site13 Sep 2023
- Gypsy and traveller site not permitted in deeply rural valued landscape24 Aug 2023
- Court of Appeal overturns High Court decision found to have misinterpreted the law01 Aug 2023