Nick specialises in planning and infrastructure, compulsory purchase, and environmental law.
Nick is on the Attorney General’s C-panel of counsel and is ranked in the Planning Resource Magazine’s top-rated planning juniors and top-rated planning juniors under 35 (top 5), as well as the directories, in the Legal500 as a leading junior in planning and environmental law, and as a “rising star” for local government work.
Nick specialises in planning and infrastructure, compulsory purchase, and environmental law. He is particularly experienced in residential (particularly older persons accommodation) and large energy infrastructure work.
He has appeared at all levels: in public inquiries, the First-tier Tribunal, Upper Tribunal, High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court. He has appeared as sole counsel in each save for the Supreme Court. He also represented the United Kingdom (again both led and unled) before the UN’s Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee. He assisted with the Banner Review of legal challenges to NSIPs.
He is on the Attorney General’s C-panel of counsel, is regularly ranked in Planning Resource Magazine’s top-rated planning juniors and top-rated planning juniors under 35 (top 10), and is ranked in the Legal500 as a leading junior in planning and environmental law, and as a “rising star” for local government work.
Prior to starting pupillage, Nick was Judicial Assistant to Lady Justice Arden (now Lady Arden) in the Court of Appeal. Before that, he taught Environmental Law at UCL during his BPTC. While studying for an LLM at Harvard Law School, he was a Senior Editor for the Harvard Business Law Review Online, clerked (equivalent to being a Judicial Assistant) for three judges in the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and represented prisoners before disciplinary tribunals.
He is a contributor to the 4th edition of Friston on Costs and A practical guide to planning law and rights of way in National Parks, the Broads, and AONBS (Law Brief, 2020). He was previously an editor both of Garner’s Environmental Law and the Encyclopaedia of Housing Law and Practice.
Nick is direct access qualified and regularly undertakes pro bono work through Advocate, the Environmental Law Foundation and the KCL Human Rights and Environment Clinic.
• University College London – LLB (First Class)
• Harvard Law School – LLM
• BPP University – BPTC
Awards
• UCL: Richard Fitzgerald Prize for academic, social and communal contribution to UCL Laws
• UCL: International Corporate Rescue Prize for the highest mark in LLB Company Law
• UCL: Highest mark in LLB Environmental Law
• BPP University: Excellence Award
• Inner Temple: Major Scholarship for the BPTC
• Inner Temple: Lawson Moot (Winner)
• Inter-Inns of Court Mooting Competition (Winner)
Memberships
Appointed to the Attorney General's C Panel of Junior Counsel (September 2021)
• Administrative Law Bar Association
• Chancery Bar Association
• Compulsory Purchase Association
• National Infrastructure Planning Association
• Planning and Environmental Bar Association
• Procurement Lawyers Association
• Property Bar Association
• United Kingdom Environmental Law Association
Publications
• ‘Mandating corporate environmental responsibility through a new directors’ duty’ (2015) Environmental Law Review 17(4), 252-265
• ‘Live/Work units: planning matters in property law” (2022) 26 L&T Rev 5, 192
• Former contributor to Garner’s Environmental Law
• Former Assistant Editor of the Encyclopaedia of Housing Law and Practice
• A practical guide to planning law and rights of way in National Parks, the Broads, and AONBS (Law Brief, 2020)
• Contributor to Friston on Costs (4th Ed, upcoming)