Tim Morshead QC

year of call: 1995

TMorshead@landmarkchambers.co.uk

areas of law

Practice Summary

Tim specialises in property litigation including not only in the traditional Chancery and common law spheres but also in the areas of public, environmental and planning law. Before taking silk he was a member of the Attorney-General’s “A” Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown, having served previously on the “C” and “B” Panels.

Advocacy and Litigation Experience

Tim is an experienced litigator. He has appeared in a variety of tribunals including the House of Lords (with leaders), the Privy Council, the Court of Appeal, the High Court (Chancery Division, Queen’s Bench Division, Technology & Construction Court, Commercial Court, Administrative Court), the County Court, the Lands Tribunal (now the Upper Tribunal, Lands Chamber), various Valuation Tribunals and Leasehold Valuation Tribunals and planning and other statutory and non-statutory inquiries. He is an experienced cross examiner of factual and technical/ expert evidence.

Tim also has experience of sitting as a non-statutory inquiry inspector. He is a qualified ADR group mediator.

Clients

Tim’s clients include major landholdings, large commercial organisations, supermarket operators and other retailers, branches of the central government, governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, banks, pension funds, charities, local authorities and statutory bodies, as well as private individuals and companies.

Property Law

Most of Tim’s work concerns land and he has a substantial “classic” Chancery and property law practice including: proprietary estoppel, fraud and constructive trusts, mortgages, land registration, commercial landlord and tenant litigation and arbitration (including rent review, business tenancy renewals, insolvency issues and dilapidations), overage agreements, disputed contracts for the sale of land, interpretation & rectification of development agreements other documents, restrictive covenants (including applications to the Lands Tribunal to modify or discharge restrictive covenants to enable residential and commercial development to proceed), easements, nuisance, trespass, adverse possession and disputed wayleave agreements both for and against statutory undertakers. Click here for further information on Tim's recent cases.

Valuation

Tim’s work often brings him into contact with valuation questions, and not only in relation to rent review and dilapidations cases. He has appeared frequently in the Lands Tribunal in valuation cases. Please click here for examples.

Compulsory Purchase and Compensation

Tim has advised and acted for a variety of clients in relation to the Olympic CPO, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link CPO, the Bedford Bypass CPO, the Clapham Bypass CPO and other highway schemes; and in relation to the compensation payable under such schemes. He was counsel for the Secretary of State for Transport in the Lands Tribunal and Court of Appeal in Persimmon Homes (Midlands) Ltd & Ors v Secretary of State for Transport [2010] EWCA Civ 474 and [2009] UKUT 126 – a case which settled in the Court of Appeal with the claimant accepting “nil” compensation. With David Holgate QC he appeared in the House of Lords in the leading modern case on the Pointe Gourde principle: Waters v. WDA [2004] 1 WLR 1304. For further examples please click here.

Rates

Tim’s property practice extends into the law of rates and he has appeared frequently for HM Revenues & Customs as well as for ratepayers in a large number of the leading cases in this field. For examples please click here.

Highways and town and village greens

Tim also has extensive experience of the law of highways and town and village greens, as well as planning law and other more-or-less public law related aspects of land law. He has appeared as counsel at inquiries and in statutory appeals/ judicial reviews of decisions in these fields. he has also sat as a village green inspector. For examples please click here.

Public and Planning Law

Tim also has considerable public law experience outside the property field, partly but not wholly in the planning field. He is now frequently instructed to advise and appear in cases involving elements of both property and public law, including for example: vires questions arising in connection with land transactions by or with public bodies, human rights issues relating to the use and occupation of land and interference with title. For examples click here.

What the directories say...

For many years Tim has been recognised in the leading UK legal directories, including the 2011 editions of Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 (“extremely bright and committed”, “a very diligent approach to work”, “reliability personified”, ‘a “phenomenally bright lawyer who is a great choice for complex cases,” he is “a man of intimidating intellect” if you are against him. He has a “very smooth but not smarmy approach in court that ensures that the tribunal always trusts what he says.”’) Click here for further directory recommendations.

QUALIFICATIONS

Tim is a graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford. He studied law at the City University. He was the winner for his year of the Inns of Court Mooting Competition and of the Everard ver Heyden Foundation Advocacy Prize and was awarded several scholarships by Lincoln’s Inn. He has contributed to Halsbury’s Laws of England Open Spaces and Monuments; to Hill & Redman's Law of Landlord and Tenant; and to Jacob's Court Precedents. He is also a qualified ADR Group Accredited Mediator.

CASES

INQUIRIES