Alistair Mills

Alistair was called to the bar in 2011 and his areas of practice are planning, environmental, and public law. He is the author of Interpreting the NPPF: the New National Planning Policy Framework (Bath Publishing, 2018). In 2019 and 2020 he was ranked by Planning Magazine in the list of the top-rated planning juniors under 35. He has appeared in leading cases in the Court of Appeal.

He has been a member of the Attorney General’s Panel of Civil Counsel (C Panel) since 2017 (moving up to the ‘B’ panel on 1 September 2021).

The Legal 500 said of Alistair in 2020:

“Alistair is a highly skilled advocate, he is very thorough with both submissions and advice, is very responsive to queries and is able to quickly digest complicated issues and pull out key points.”

European Union Law

Alistair’s practice raises matters of European Union law. In the context of planning and environmental law, the decision of the Court of Appeal in R (Shirley) v SSHCLG [2019] EWCA Civ 22 included arguments on the interpretation of the Air Quality Directive. The social security cases SSWP v MC [2019] UKUT 84 (AAC) and IG v SSWP [2016] UKUT 176 (AAC) concerned the EU harmonisation regime for social security benefits.

Alistair graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, with a Double First in 2009.  He obtained a distinction on the Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford in 2010.  He was awarded Outstanding on the Bar Professional Training Course from Northumbria University in 2011.

Alistair provides small-group teaching in administrative law and is an external College Lecturer in Law at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He has published widely, including in the Cambridge Law Journal, Judicial Review, the Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly, and the Journal of Professional Negligence.