Our Business Regulation and Defence department represents businesses and individuals facing prosecution by Health and Safety, Environmental Health, Trading Standards, Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform or other regulatory authority. In some instances our early intervention can stop an investigation from progressing to a prosecution before the courts.

If you are facing prosecution for a regulatory offence, we provide advice from the outset so you fully understand what the process involves.

The prosecuting authority may ask you attend a formal interview, under caution. It is important to understand whether you should attend the interview, and we can advise you on this.  Should you decide to be interviewed we can accompany you and provide legal representation throughout the interview, in order to protect and advance your legal rights as well as representing you at court if the case goes that far.

In addition, Leathes Prior also deals with privately funded criminal defence work, both in the Magistrates’ court and Crown court. We do not undertake what is commonly referred to as ‘Legal Aid’ work.

The Department also has a dedicated team of lawyers dealing with traffic and motoring cases on behalf of clients throughout the United Kingdom. For more information on Traffic Lawyers please click here.

We also deal with a variety of licensing matters such as:

The Department successfully obtained some of the first 24 hour licenses under the Licensing Act 2003 in East Anglia and was also heavily involved in licensing gaming establishments after the introduction of the Gambling Act 2005.

For more information about legal representation or licensing matters please contact Tim Cary.