Michelle Doyle

Practice Areas

Disputes, Environmental & Planning, Projects & Infrastructure

Career

Michelle has been a partner in our Disputes Group since 2003. A vastly experienced litigator, she specialises in the risk management of major strategic infrastructure projects and is integrally involved in “proofing” projects from an environmental and planning law perspective, so as to identify any possible weaknesses in the assessment conducted and in the application documents so that they can then be addressed and resolved. This allows identified risks to be addressed at an early stage and ensures that the application ultimately presented on behalf of our clients to the competent authority is robust and minimises the risk of the competent authority making mistakes in its decision making processes. Michelle also has extensive experience in large scale litigation (High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court), particularly in the area of planning and environmental law and in successfully defending judicial review challenges to major infrastructure projects.

Michelle is a trusted adviser to a number of public and private sector clients and brings her years of litigation experience to bear in respect of applications for development consent (including oral hearings as part of the consent process). In the present environment, we clearly see a greater scrutiny of the decision-making process and in particular on compliance with the requirements of the environmental impact assessment and appropriate assessment processes. We also see decision makers making more procedural mistakes that are amenable to Judicial Review and that could have been avoided. Michelle brings a fresh and critical eye to the consent process to ensure that any concerns that a competent authority might raise are considered and any gaps in the process plugged. Where the applicable tests under environmental impact assessment and appropriate assessment processes will be closely scrutinised by environmental activists or other objectors, we see our role as being critical to “future proof” these aspects of the decision-making process and the decisions achieved to ensure insofar as possible they can withstand legal challenge. Michelle is well known for her practical and pragmatic advice and her ability to steer a course through challenging applications for complex projects.