Pascal Bates

Practice Areas

Pascal acts in regulatory prosecutions, inquests and enforcement notice appeals for and against national and local enforcement agencies. Advising regulators and regulated persons on legal requirements and practical solutions. Focus on safety (health and safety, food, fire, railway etc) and other consumer issues (trading standards, planning/environmental enforcement etc). Recent court cases, all successful, include: Hawkeswood Metal Recycling (2023) – prosecution of four defendants when five died from safety failures in a Birmingham scrapyard; Johnson and others (2023) – prosecution of fairground operators when exploding trampoline killed three year old; Shell UK and Ampelmann Operations (2023) – offshore safety failures of both design of equipment and its operation; Cambridgeshire County Council (2024) – prosecution of local authority operating guided busway after catalogue of safety incidents, including three deaths. Recent advisory includes: safety of UK spaceports; operation of pressure systems in large-scale manufacturing; safety of two wholly different types of military vehicle. The consumer side, acting (ongoing) for the port health regulators for food imports at Felixstowe, Harwich, Channel Tunnel and Dover (both dealing with disputes over consignments and advising on the development and interpretation of the law in the context of complex, ongoing, post-Brexit changes); regulation of fishing rights over shellfish beds (2024); acting (2023) in a dispute about consumer protections in the auction sale of a very valuable diamond ring. Wider practice often involves statutory construction and real property issues, such as generation of prescriptive easements over a multiple-owner city centre block’s yard. MA (Cantab). Regulatory A List since 2006.