About us

Francis Taylor Building (formerly 2 Harcourt Buildings) is one of the leading planning and public law sets.

We specialise in environmental, licensing, administrative, planning and parliamentary work. This consists mostly of advocacy in the High Court and public inquiries, combined with a variety of written work and appearances before other tribunals, including Select Committees in parliament.

Other expertise includes: transport and works orders; human rights; education; energy; compulsory purchase; the law of commons and village greens; regulatory; ecclesiastical; highways; rating and landlord and tenant law.

In recent years, in addition to numerous challenges in relation to planning permission and development plans, members of chambers have been involved in cases before the High Court, Court of Appeal, House of Lords and public inquiries.

Work in other jurisdictions has included litigation in Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, the ECJ and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Recent work includes: the Stansted expansion, redevelopment of Kings Cross and Victoria stations, Thameslink, Crossrail and the desalination plant at Beckton.

Our graduate recruitment opportunities

We are looking to recruit ambitious and able pupils with a 2.1 degree or higher. We will be offering a maximum of two 12-month pupillages commencing in October 2011. Each pupillage will carry renumeration of £40,000.

There are 43 tenants in chambers, 17 of whom are silks. As a chambers we place a high priority on developing our pupils’ ability as advocates and operate an internal training scheme. This involves making administrative court applications before senior members of chambers.