FTB is a barristers’ chambers with a leading reputation for planning, environment, licensing, public law, compulsory purchase and land valuation, major infrastructure projects, local government law, rating, ecclesiastical and religious liberty, highways, commons and open spaces and ADR.
We are consistently recognised as a leading set by the market and directories because of the quality and number of leading practitioners we can provide, our major projects and our client base.
In May 2025, the Supreme Court held that the public’s right of access to the Dartmoor Commons (which is private land) includes the right to camp overnight. At the heart of the matter was a narrow point of statutory construction – namely whether “open-air recreation” in section 10(1) of the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 included the pitching of tents (see [14] of the judgment).
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The Highsted Park inquiry is an example of the high-profile planning work that FTB Chambers is involved in.
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When the State takes private land for a major infrastructure project, the law requires the dispossessed owner to be compensated for the value of their loss. Under the principle of equivalence, the former owner is entitled to neither more nor less than their actual loss. What that principle of equivalence means in practice, and how it is measured, was at the centre of a five-day hearing before the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) in March 2026.
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Net Zero Teesside is the United Kingdom's first "full-chain" carbon capture and storage project, and aims to be the world's first gas-fired power station to operate with carbon capture and storage. Granted development consent in February 2024, the project comprises a new gas-fired electricity generating station with post-combustion carbon capture, generating up to the equivalent of the average annual electricity needs of more than a million homes flexible, dispatchable low-carbon power. It also provides a network of pipelines to gather carbon dioxide from a cluster of industries on Teesside and offshore infrastructure to transport the captured carbon to storage beneath the North Sea. The plant is "mid-merit": designed to ramp up and down quickly to meet demand when intermittent renewables fall short, and so to help stabilise the grid as the country moves toward net zero.
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D.E.L.T.A. Merseyside Ltd and another v Uber Britannia Ltd [2025] UKSC 31
The difference between “black cabs” (or hackney carriages) and private hire vehicles is well known. The relevant regulatory context is, however, far from straightforward with the regulation of black cabs predating not just the smartphone but the car itself (as noted in UTAG v TFL [2022] EWCA Civ 1026, [1] (Where David Matthias KC and Charles Streeten represented the Appellant).
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This hybrid breakfast briefing will focus on the recent judgment of the Court of Appeal in the Principled Offsite Logistics Limited ("POLL") case concerning rates mitigation and consideration of "occupation" more generally (The Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London v 48th Street Holdings Ltd & Anor [2026] EWCA Civ 970 (29 July 2026)).
We are pleased to invite you to the second in a series of three breakfast briefings examining the key changes introduced in the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
Questions of environmental justice, the climate crisis, biodiversity and resource management are among the defining issues of our time.
In 2021, Francis Taylor Building and four other planning, property and public law sets (Cornerstone Barristers, Field Court Chambers, Kings Chambers and Landmark Chambers) set up a mentoring scheme for underrepresented groups at the Bar.
FTB is delighted to announce the appointment of 5 new members of its Academic Panel. The Academic Panel allows Chambers to foster closer links with the academic world and to exchange ideas on developments of interest in its particular areas of expertise.
