How Fish Legal helps you

Fish Legal uses the whole range of the law  – common, statutory, European and international – to protect fisheries. 

Membership gives you direct access to a lawyer specialising in environmental and fisheries law and an indemnity against all legal costs incurred until recovered from a defendant.  It also offers the protection of the Fish Legal ‘fighting fund’, built up from donations and legacies over many years.  In the unlikely event that we take your case to court and lose, we can pay the legal costs of the other side for you.  Membership subscriptions are effectively pooled so that no one person has to foot the costs of  taking legal action against a polluter.  In the event of a successful legal action, all damages go back to the member to be used for habitat work, restocking where appropriate and restoration of their waters.   

Our legal team has built up an enviable reputation. We have taken many controversial issues to the courts and taken risks to ensure that polluters are held to account.  In successful cases not only is the club, fishery or riparian owner compensated, but there is also a much wider public benefit from tackling pollution and damage to the aquatic environment head-on.

As well as taking legal action Fish Legal’s team of lawyers – both English and Scots-qualified -  offers advice to its member clubs, fisheries and riparian owners on a range of issues including:

• Chronic and acute pollution issues affecting fisheries e.g. sewage, agricultural, industrial, silt, nutrient enrichment
• Over-abstraction and low flows
• In-river works (flood defence/dredging and land drainage/tree clearance)
• Fish farming impacts, including escaped farmed fish
• Hydro-power development and barriers to fish passage
• Planning and development consent threats to fisheries
• Challenging public authorities’ decision making that affect fisheries
• Freedom of information and environmental information requests
• Dealing with regulators such as the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, and Northern Ireland Environment Agency

We also offer guidance and factsheets on the law covering important issues affecting fisheries and angling such as poaching, rights on navigation, data protection and discrimination.

To see examples of our cases click on the link below.