Estelle Dehon KC

Silk: 2022 | Call: 2006

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Estelle Dehon KC
Daryl Hughes, Senior Practice Manager

Estelle Dehon KC is a versatile leading public law barrister with a broad practice, specialising in environment and planning law, with particular expertise in climate change, net zero and energy infrastructure. The other main area of her work is data protection and access to information, in which she is again recognised as a leading barrister. She also practices in election law and human rights law and is recognised in administrative and public law. Estelle took silk in 2022 and founded the cross-disciplinary centre of excellence for climate litigation and advice, Cornerstone Climate, in 2023.

Estelle appears in both the 2022 and 2023 ENDS Report’s Power List of the most influential environmental professionals in the UK. She is also one of The Planner’s Women of Influence, having been included in the list four times in the past six years. She was awarded a Climate Law & Governance Global Leadership Award at COP27. Estelle is a Fellow of the RSA. She is also a member of the European Commission’s Multistakeholder Expert Group on the GDPR and has been since its inception in 2017.

She is accredited for Public Access so that she can be instructed by anybody directly, and enquiries about this are welcomed.

Estelle is recognised in Chambers and Partners as a “first-rate” advocate who has “a wonderful manner with clients” and in Legal 500 as “a determined and tenacious advocate, whose oral and written advocacy is nuanced, well-reasoned and highly effective and whose grasp of the law consistently impresses”.

She was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2006

Experience and Expertise

Estelle has considerable experience as a court and tribunal advocate, as well as representing parties at major planning inquiries and infrastructure examinations. She regularly appears in the High Court and Court of Appeal in judicial review claims and statutory appeals. Estelle has particular experience in climate change-related challenges: she acted in the Supreme Court in Finch, the leading case on the climate impact of fossil fuel development; in the Court of Appeal challenge to the lack of emergency planning at the UK’s first site for fracking horizontal wells and challenging an extension to coal mining in Wales; in the High Court defending the Secretary of State’s refusal of an open cast coal mine in Druridge Bay and challenging the grant of new oil and gas licences. Her inquiry work includes National Infrastructure examinations (eg Gatwick; Norfolk Vanguard; Hornsea 3) and planning inquiries (eg Bristol Airport; New Works and Steeraway solar farms; Ellesmere Port “matrix acidisation”).

The other main area of Estelle’s practice is data protection and access to information. She advises a wide range of clients, both in the public and private sector, in relation to data protection and access to information matters. She has particular interest and expertise in data protection, big data, profiling, artificial intelligence and machine learning, on which she has been advising insurance companies and tech startups. She also regularly advises on data protection questions, including complex issues of international data transfer for multinational companies. Estelle also undertakes advocacy work in this area and has experience bringing and defending data breach compensation claims in the County and High Courts. She has been involved in key cases, including successfully representing the investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi before the Information Tribunal in the leading case on the extent of the right of access to information.

Conferences

Estelle regularly speaks at conferences and seminars. She spoke at the COP27 Climate Law and Governance Day; at London City Hall on the Retrofit vs Rebuild Report; at the Scottish Public Law Group Conference and at Oxford Meeting Minds. She co-presented on Climate and Biodiversity at Cornerstone’s 2023 Planning Day;  on Embodied Carbon at Cornerstone’s 2022 Planning Day and on Climate Change Litigation at Cornerstone’s 2021 Planning Day. Previously she addressed the APPG on Energy Costs on Assessing COP26 Outcomes; presented a webinar on Planning and Human Rights for MHCLG; spoke on Environment and the Rule of Law at the UKELA Annual Conference, co-presented a webinar on Infrastructure and Net Zero and chaired a seminar on Opportunities for a Climate Positive Economy After COVID-19. In 2019 she gave the Legal Update at the Joint Planning Law Conference.

Professional Memberships

Estelle has been a member of the UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA) since 2012 and sits on the UKELA Public Health and Environmental Law Working Party. She has been a trustee and member of UKELA Council since 2019. Estelle is also a member of the Planning and Environment Bar Association (PEBA); the National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA), the Administrative Law Bar Association (ALBA) and JUSTICE.

Estelle is co-Chair of the Bar Council’s Climate Crisis Working Group, where she is leading work on the impact of the climate crisis on legal ethics and on guidance concerning climate conscious practice.

Expertise