Victoria Barnes

About

Victoria is a senior associate in the firm’s Environment team with over 10 years post qualification experience, advising on the full spectrum of environmental law and regulation, including contaminated land, permitting, waste and water law, circular economy, ESG, climate change/sustainability, carbon law and energy efficiency , chemicals, producer responsibility and product stewardship.

She is an experienced solicitor advocate with substantial contentious, advisory and regulatory experience, with a focus on and specialist expertise in environmental litigation (including judicial review), incidents and enforcement. Victoria is recognised as a leading associate and for her wealth of experience in environmental regulatory investigations and disputes.

Victoria is also highly experienced in operational compliance as well as environmental risk management and transactional work involving environmental matters, including undertaking buyer/seller due diligence, environmental risk allocation, insurance considerations and instructing/managing environmental consultants.

Victoria has acted for a broad spectrum of clients across the public and private sectors, including developers, utilities, energy and waste operators, manufacturers, government departments and public authorities.

She is a member of the firm’s Energy & Utilities, Water, ESG and Built Environment sectors and groups.

Experience

• Advising a global technology company on an investigation by the Environment Agency into water pollution offences, including advising on incident response, remediation and the management of environmental consultants.
• Representing a statutory water and sewerage undertaker in its successful defence of an opt-out collective action claim alleging under-reporting of pollution incidents, which was proceeding before the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
• Advising a multinational conglomerate on PFAS issues and its water discharge activities in connection with (i) the remediation and sale of a former industrial site and (ii) operations at an existing manufacturing plant.
• Acting on the appeal of an abatement notice in relation to noise nuisance on behalf of a manufacturer, including representing the client before the Magistrates’ Court and engaging in settlement negotiations.
• Advising a statutory undertaker on a number of complex and strategic water resource and bioresources projects, including DPC projects, providing advice on permitting issues, water supply obligations and risk allocation considerations.
• Verification and assurance organisation: Advising a verification and assurance services organisation on new product labels that included a range of environmental claims to assess whether the proposed claims posed any UK greenwashing compliance risk.

Credentials

• Admitted as a solicitor: England & Wales (2011)
• Higher rights of audience (civil)