Simon Tilling

About

Simon is recognised as a leading environmental lawyer and is head of the firm’s dedicated environmental law team. He advises on all aspects of UK environmental law and regulation and is dual-qualified enabling him to practise throughout England and Wales and Scotland.

Simon advises on operational compliance, regulatory investigations, enforcement and criminal defence, regulatory appeals, tribunal hearings, judicial review and environmental civil claims.

He has significant experience in the water sector, having spent three years in-house at a water utility company as head of its environmental law team, and he co-chairs the firm’s Water Sector Group.

Simon also advises on sustainable chemistry, product stewardship and international supply chain compliance for the market of Great Britain including UK REACH, GB Biocidal Products Regulation and the circular economy regimes such as WEEE and RoHS and regularly co-counsels on pan-European compliance.

Simon is an elected council member of the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association.

Experience

• Conducting regulatory appeals and tribunal proceedings including the first appeal under the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Regulations in Northern Ireland and an appeal on public registers to the UK Secretary of State.
• Conducting environmental civil claims for nuisance, environmental harm from products and contamination claims including defending the first wind turbine claim for visual impact in the UK and a High Court claim for migrating contamination.
• Conducting environmental judicial reviews, including regulatory decisions of the Environment Agency on behalf of hydropower developers.
• Advising on regulatory investigations and prosecutions in the energy, waste, manufacturing, chemicals and petrochemicals sectors, including in the aftermath of the Buncefield disaster.
• Acting on international indemnity claims including regulator clean-up of nuclear materials in the USA; remediation of a biochemicals facility in Sweden; and a USD billion claim for global non-compliance litigated in the Courts of New York.
• Advising on a GBP multi-million product stewardship/liability claim for environmental damage caused by the release of chemicals from a product into the aquatic environment.

Credentials

• Admitted as a solicitor: England & Wales (2006), Scotland (2016)