Senior Planning Lawyer (Environmental)

Our Real Estate Planning team are widely regarded as one of the best in the UK, advising on some of the most iconic and ambitious developments in the country. From offshore wind farms located 40 kilometres out to sea, to major residential schemes including new garden villages and regeneration programmes, to transformative rail, road and airport projects, and complex waste and mineral developments — we're involved in all of it. This is your chance to help shape the future of nationally significant infrastructure and development.

What will you be doing?

Our national team delivers a full spectrum of planning expertise, working on some of the most challenging and high‑profile mandates across the residential, commercial, infrastructure, environmental and waste sectors. We also handle contentious work including Judicial Review and Lands Chamber proceedings. As our workload continues to grow — not just in volume, but in ambition and complexity — we're looking for someone with strong experience in planning, infrastructure and environmental work, and a genuine enthusiasm for helping to develop and strengthen our fantastic team.

What does the ideal candidate look like?

As an environmental planning specialist, you'll play a central role in securing consents for nationally significant and complex developments, with a particular focus on net‑zero‑enabling projects. You'll lead legal reviews of EIA strategy and documentation, SEA/HRA, and ensure environmental outcomes are effectively secured through conditions and s106 (including BNG and nutrient neutrality). You'll help shape DCO/NSIP applications, support examinations and stakeholder engagement, and take the lead in managing environmental risk through appeals and JR. You'll also be working alongside a market‑leading energy and infrastructure practice. If you bring hands‑on experience across these areas and a confident understanding of the NPPF and current reforms, we'd love to hear from you.

To be successful in this role, you'll need as a minimum:

• A legal qualification with 5+ years post admission experience gained within a planning team.
• Experience working on large scale infrastructure projects with a focus on environmental planning.
• Have lead on legal reviews of environmental impact assessments.
• Knowledge of habitat regulations and application assessments.
• Broader planning experience across a range of consenting regimes including DCOs, TWAOs, HROs and planning permission.
• Sector experience in transport (specifically Rail and light Rail) and Energy (Renewables and Energy transmission) would be advantageous.

What makes it great to work here?

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, neurodiversity, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about DEI at WBD here . We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page. Please also let us know if you need this job advert or the application form in a different format.

We will offer an interview to candidates with a disability or long-term condition who meet the minimum criteria for this role. You can opt into this scheme within the application form. Your response to this question is only used for this purpose, is only visible to the recruitment team and is not used for data monitoring.

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.