Irwin Mitchell hires planning partner
Pamela Chesterman joins from Brabners in Liverpool, where she was legal director and head of planning.
She will be based in the planning and environment team at Irwin Mitchell’s Liverpool and Manchester offices, supporting the law firm’s clients in the region, and nationally.
Prior to working at Brabners, Chesterman was head of planning at Prosperity Law in Liverpool. She has experience across a wide area of environmental and planning law and has advised on housing and commercial-led development as well as on local government issues.
She has had significant experience working as a lawyer within local councils – for example, as an environmental solicitor, then legal manager, at Cheshire West and Chester Council, and as a consultant lawyer for West Lancashire Council. She has also held representative roles at the North West branch of legal trade body Lawyers in Local Government.
Chesterman is currently retained by a large car park management company to provide planning and advertisement legal advice. And she has recently helped one of the UK’s largest housebuilders deal with councils’ non-determination of applications, which threatened to undermine their schemes.
The appointment takes Irwin Mitchell’s specialist planning and environment team to thirteen. The team is headed up by national planning partner Claire Petricca-Riding and works as a national practice, advising clients all over the country.
Adrian Barlow, the firm’s director of property legal services, said: “Both planning and environment are currently fast-moving disciplines where our clients need up-to-date and strategic legal advice to keep ahead of the game, particularly at a time of political change.
“Pamela will play an important part in helping us to fulfil Irwin Mitchell’s ambition to provide first-class advice to clients. She comes with great hands-on experience, especially her in-depth knowledge of both local government and the development sector and will be a great asset to the P&E practice and the wider property department.”
