Profiles of Partners

David Horrocks – Technical Partner

David is an independent chartered environmental health practitioner. He qualified in 1976 and spent twenty years in local government, his last position being as Head of Service at Brentwood DC. In 1992 he set up his own consultancy practice and he now specialises in environmental protection work including the control of environmental and occupational noise and the investigation and resolution of statutory nuisances. He has tutored on the Institute of Acoustics Diploma course since 1993 and has been an examiner on this course since 2005. His published works include: a paper examining the environmental noise impact of a proposed heliport facility; a paper reviewing the British Standard 4142; and papers analysing the complementary roles of planning and environmental health in the control of community noise. He was part of the Temple Group team that produced for Defra the Noise Management Guide for Local Authorities published in 2006 and worked on a similar document for Scottish LAs under a separate contract with the Scottish Executive. He also worked on the Temple team that produced the Odour Guidance for Local Authorities for Defra published in March 2010. David has excellent written and verbal communication skills and has considerable experience in preparing expert reports and in presenting expert evidence at public inquiries and in criminal and civil court proceedings. David is a well respected member of the environmental health profession and for the last 15 years has been an accredited assessor for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s (CIEH) Scheme for Assessing the Professional Competence/Development of graduate environmental health practitioners. With John Pointing David has presented a number of training workshops for the CIEH on Statutory Nuisance for LA enforcement officers.

John Pointing – Legal Partner

John is a barrister with over 30 years’ experience in environmental and environmental health law. His practice includes advising local authorities, commercial clients and private individuals. He has acted as a legal consultant for the Temple Group, AECOM and ARM Acoustics. He has provided professional training for 30 years for environmental health professionals and solicitors, including on courses run by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Currently, he provides training with David Horrocks as part of the remit of Statutory Nuisance Solutions.

Before qualifying as a barrister in 1992, John worked as a criminologist. He edited books on Alternatives to Custody (Blackwell, 1986) and, with Mike Maguire, Victims of Crime: A New Deal? (Open UP). He was the first assistant director of Victim Support.

His recent research is concerned with regulatory law, statutory nuisance and food crime. This has resulted in a number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is co-author (with Rosalind Malcolm) of Statutory Nuisance: Law and Practice (OUP,  2nd ed. 2011) and Food Safety Enforcement (CIEH, 2005). He has advised Defra and drafted the legal sections of the Noise Management Guide for Local Authorities and the Odour Guidance for Local Authorities, published in 2006 and 2010 respectively. His most recent book – co-authored with Stephen Battersby – is: Statutory Nuisance and Residential Property: Environmental Health Problems in Housing (Routledge, 2019)

John has taught property and environmental law at Kingston, London South Bank and Surrey universities. He is an Honorary Fellow at Surrey University. Since 2003, he has been interested in issues affecting the Muslim community, particularly those to do with fake Halal and food crime. He is a volunteer community mediator with Ealing Mediation Service.