Landmark Chambers

Dr Ashley Bowes specialises in all aspects of the development and use of land, including planning, property, licensing and local government law.

Ashley has particular expertise in resolving public access to land disputes, involving the sub-specialisms of rights of way, village greens, commons and highways law. He is a member of the Attorney General’s B Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown, in which capacity he represents the UK Government in his areas of specialism and was shortlisted by Chambers and Partners as Environment/Planning Junior of the Year 2018.

Ashley provides legal and strategic advice at every stage of the development consent process: from navigating local plan examinations, handling access and restrictive covenant issues, through to contested planning applications and appeals and onto litigation in the courts.

Ashley is the General Editor of Sweet & Maxwell’s Journal of Planning & Environment Law and the author of Oxford University Press’s textbook, A Practical Approach to Planning Law, as well as being a contributor to Butterworths Planning Law Service, the Routledge Handbook of Comparative Planning Law and to Cornerstone on the Planning Court (2nd Ed).

In 2021, Ashley contributed to the Landscape Institute’s Technical Guidance Note 02/21 Assessing Landscape Value Outside National Designations.

In 2019, Ashley was co-opted to the Planning and Environment Bar Association Committee. He was elected as Treasurer in 2024. In 2020 he coordinated PEBA’s response to the Government’s Independent Review of Administrative Law.

Ashley brings his diverse industry experience as a local authority member, running a planning consultancy and lecturing in property law to provide:

• Early advice on likelihood of obtaining permissions or licenses

• Tailored consultations on design and content of applications

• Responding to local authority and resident objections

• Advice on conducting public consultations

• Promoting applications at hearings and public inquiries

• Challenging adverse decisions through the courts

• Amending permissions or licenses

• Tailored in-house advisory work (for example, assisting a local authority prepare a local plan, or undertake a SHMAA)

• Specialist in-house training (for example, public inquiry training)

• Conference case law updates (for example to the RTPI annual conference).

Memberships 

Appointed to the Attorney General’s B Panel of Junior Counsel

• Planning and Environment Bar Association (Treasurer)

Publications

• Routledge Handbook of Comparative Planning Law (contributing author) – January 2023

• A Practical Approach to Planning Law – July 2019

• “As of Right” where are we now? – January 2016

• The Localism Act 2011 and the General Power of Competence (co-authored with Dr John Stanton) – January 2014

• The Registration of Town or Village Greens and the Res Judicata Myth – January 2012

• The Rise of Neighbourhood Triffids – January 2011

• Revocation of Regional Strategies, a State Frontier Rolled Back too Soon? – January 2011

• Acquiring Public Rights over Land Held for Statutory Purposes (co-author with George Laurence KC and Simon Adarnyk) – July 2005

• Is land in public ownership in a special category? A consideration of the law post R(Lancashire CC) v Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ – July 2005

• Are all considerations equal? A muse on materiality – July 2005