Megan Thomas has practised in town and country planning and environmental law since qualifying as a barrister in 1987.  She has a very thorough knowledge and understanding of planning law and is also a decision maker in planning appeals. She is favoured by clients for finding the most practical solution to a planning problem and being persuasive and succinct as an advocate.

A large part of her time is spent acting as an advocate in planning inquiries. She has experience in the High Court and Court of Appeal as well as in Crown Court and Magistrates’ Court matters. She has also appeared in Parliament petitioning against infrastructure bills. She has seconded as an in-house environmental and planning solicitor for a local authority where she gained particular expertise in negotiating section 106 agreements and advising on injunctions, flytipping prosecutions, advertisements, noise nuisance and other enforcement issues.

She has particular expertise in judicial review matters relating to planning, environmental and compulsory purchase decisions.

She is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Bar and has recently appeared in the British Virgin Islands High Court and Court of Appeal on environmental judicial review matters.

Planning

She appears at planning inquiries for both public sector and private sector clients. Her experience includes:

• Appearing at numerous wind farm inquiries and other renewable energy schemes;
• Promoting and objecting to Local Plans (including minerals and waste plans);
• Promoting and objecting to large infrastructure projects such as underground gas cavern and strata schemes, bypasses and town centre redevelopments; and
• Promoting and objecting to housing schemes.

Megan Thomas has been instructed by many leading UK firms including JS Sainsbury, Tesco Ltd, Granada Leisure, Bovis Homes, British Telecom, Toyota UK, Eagle Star Properties, David Lloyd Leisure, Berkeley Homes and R Collard Ltd.

Environmental law

Her particular experience in the environmental law field includes:

• Advising on waste and landfill issues;
• Advocacy in waste-related prosecutions in the Crown Court and Magistrates Court;
• Advice on licences for waste disposal;
• Dealing at inquiry with noise, odour and traffic issues; and
• Successfully attaining an order against nuisance (barking dogs) in the Magistrates’ Court.

Compulsory purchase and compensation is another field in which she has had much experience over the last 20 or so years through promoting CP Orders for public authorities including highway authorities, objecting against proposed orders and advising on compensation including the sterilization of minerals.  She has appeared twice in the Lands Tribunal in 2008.

Recent instructions include:

• Upper Heyford Planning Inquiry (Housing) for Environment Agency; 
• Environment Agency v. R Collard Ltd and Others (Crown Court prosecution pursuant to s.33 EPA 1990);
• Routh windfarm;
• Withernwick windfarm;
• Tower Hill Gardens compulsory purchase; and
• Beef Island Leisure Resort judicial review in BVI.

Megan Thomas accepts public access instructions.