Planning/environment
Planning law regulates the way in which property owners use and develop their property in the interests of the wider community. Local planning authorities are required to follow a legal and policy framework in their decision making. Planning law is often interwoven with other branches of the law, such as environmental, local government and judicial review. Clients might include landowners, developers, local authorities, public and private utilities, government departments, amenity groups and individuals. In 2012, the year Alexander Greaves was called to the Bar, Rolling Stone magazine updated its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Nestled at number 258 was the 1968 offering The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society – the London band’s sixth studio album and one of their most acclaimed works. The album not only cemented a place in music history that year, but also inadvertently held a clue to Alexander’s path towards the planning Bar. “It was not entirely accidental that I ended up in planning law or that I did my pupillage at Frances Taylor Building (FTB),” recalls Alexander. “During my law conversion course, I decided I wanted to go into public law and looked at various different areas. It was then I developed an interest in village green law – a slightly esoteric discipline related to planning law. It was while researching it further that I came across FTB, as they’ve done quite a lot of work in the area.” He obtained pupillage at FTB and, found that the work he was doing was unlike anything he had experienced during his postgraduate legal education. While he points out that no prior knowledge of the subject is expected of young barristers, the learning curve during his first few months of pupillage was pretty steep.
Three-way split Pupillage at FTB is split between three supervisors, with pupils spending four months with each and the level of responsibility increasing as experience is gained. “Certainly for the first four months I was pretty much just following my supervisor,” recalls Alexander, “accompanying them to inquiries, court, conferences or on site visits. I would also do written work for them in chambers, whether researching points of law or doing first drafts of opinions and skeleton arguments. After the first four months, you are encouraged to start doing more of that sort of work for other members of chambers, which helps broaden your experience. In the second six, you are encouraged take on some work of your own while continuing to do work for other members of chambers.” While much of the work Alexander found himself doing in his own right during this time bore little resemblance to his planning caseload today, it gave him the chance to build confidence dealing with matters on his own and to familiarise himself with the workings of the court. He was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to act as a junior for another member of chambers on a week-long village green inquiry. “I’m not sure how many cases I did, but it gives you experience; and although you have the assistance of your supervisors, who are there for guidance if you need it, at the end of the day you are the one on your feet, arguing in court. The nature of the job is such that there isn’t a lot of pure planning work at pupil level, although I did do some, so a lot of what I was doing was small county court work, which dropped off once I got tenancy.” Variety is the spice of life One of the things that Alexander likes most about the planning Bar is that his workload is quite varied and he finds his time split between advisory work, inquiry work and court work. The advisory work consists of
For more chambers that work in this practice area, please use the “Pupillage index” starting on p519.
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