It is a great honour to be appointed by Welsh Government as a Deputy Environmental Protection Assessor for Wales, working with the other Deputy John Henderson, and reporting to the Interim Environmental Protection Assessor for Wales, Professor Lynda Warren.
On 11 October 2025 Dawn Media and Breathe Pakistan convened a major conference on air pollution in Lahore, Pakistan.
On 26 June 2025 as part of London Climate Action Week https://www.londonclimateactionweek.org I attended the launch of the 7th edition of this hugely important and influential report and resource at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/ .
It was great to make a first visit to Accra and Ghana in mid April 2025 to contribute to a workshop on nuclear liability as part of the European Commission programme in support of Ghana’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, led by friends and colleagues from Vienna. I did sessions on nuclear liability, and on nuclear transport.
In September 2006 I had the good fortune to be invited to speak at a conference in Mariupol, Ukraine, on the ‘Effective Implementation of Environmental Laws’. What is happening there now has reminded me of a visit to Ukraine at a point in time when it was still emerging from its Soviet past, and of earlier witnessing the Berlin Wall and life behind the Iron Curtain.
On 23rd February 2022, the European Commission published a legislative proposal for a new Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. Although the proposed Directive remains to be negotiated and will have a lead in period before implementation, it is likely to have an immediate impact in signalling the likely direction of travel for major companies in the EU and beyond.
In the second of our notes from the highly successful Wildlife & Countryside Link conference in London on 6th December 2021, we cover some of the remarks by George Eustice, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs on the Environment Act 2021, and discuss the potential significance of his remarks on environmental targets.
The Environment Bill, first published in draft in 2018, subject to interminable delays and carried over from one Parliamentary session to another, finally completed its passage through Parliament on 9th November 2021, still mired in controversy over whether it addresses with adequate clarity the pressing need for effective enforcement of environmental laws
I am really looking forward to speaking on 23 September at the Annual Scottish Conference 2021 of UKELA - UK Environmental Law Association
A new report published on 22 July 2021 outlines the scale of illegal waste activity in England. The report “An independent Study into Fly-tipping and Unregistered Waste Carriers in England” was carried out by Air & Space Evidence and EPR, and commissioned by Material Focus, the not-for-profit behind the Recycle Your Electricals campaign. I was one of a number of reviewers taken from academia, the waste industry and former Government and regulatory officials.
On 9 July 2021, Southern Water entered 51 guilty pleas to charges of making unpermitted discharges or untreated sewage along the southern coast of England. The charges covered 6,971 unpermitted discharges, some 61,704 hours or a total of 7 years worth of discharges of millions of gallons over the five years from 2010 to 2015.
