Environmental Regulation
Andrew provides expert advocacy and advisory services in environmental law and practice.
Andrew has a wealth of experience in the defence of a wide variety of cases brought by the Environmental Agency under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. He has particular expertise in cases that involve the owners / directors of farms and rural land.
Andrew’s extensive case experience includes defending companies and individuals accused of breaches of waste licences and permits and illegal waste dumping. He has extensive knowledge of the areas of exemptions and disclosure as well as the financial issues associated with Environmental Agency prosecutions and subsequent proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
Andrew is recommended year after year in Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500, where he is consistently recognised for his expertise as a leading silk.
Andrew brings over 30 years of experience at the criminal bar to bear when examining both the evidence of witnesses and documentary evidence. He prides himself on attention to detail, thorough preparation, his understanding of complex legal and evidential issues and his ability to resolve them.
Environmental Regulation Cases
R v James Baggaley
Operation ‘Lord’
The Environment Agency (EA) spent several months building a picture of evidence of an illegal waste site on Fen Lane in Long Bennington near Newark.
They were 12 people and one company charged. 10 pleaded guilty. James Baggaley and two others stood trial at Nottingham Crown Court. Following an eight-week trial, they were all found guilty.
EA officers conducted a raid on the site in April 2020 with Lincolnshire Police. Intelligence revealed lorry-loads of shredded waste were regularly being accepted onto the site, which was the size of a football pitch.
Waste was burned daily and buried. This activity intensified during the first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, and so action was taken to bring it to a halt.
Officers also seized an excavator and a lorry. They were actively depositing more waste at the site when those officers arrived.
The prosecution was brought against individuals that ran the illegal waste site; burned the waste; drove waste to the site and the landowners (Baggaley and Marc Greenfield). Two waste brokers were also prosecuted.
Those that ran the illegal waste site, burned the waste and drove it to the site, were each sentenced to terms of immediate imprisonment. Baggaley and Marc Greenfield each received suspended sentences of imprisonment.
