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Rachel Lee

Rachel Lee

Managing Associate

020 7405 4600

Contact by email

Rachel is an experienced planning solicitor with considerable in-house local government experience gained before moving into private practice. She has extensive knowledge of local government, planning, administrative and highways law.

Rachel’s role:

Rachel is an expert in advising on all aspects of planning and highway law. She negotiates complex section 106 and other agreements advising clients on major development projects including large mixed-use urban regeneration schemes, housing, commercial and industrial developments, including advising on affordable housing, viability and CIL.

Skills and strengths:

Rachel is focused on success for clients.   She works collaboratively to get the job done and maintains flexible relationships focused on ensuring the client’s outcomes are met. Rachel heads up the firm’s relationship with a London Borough for whom we carry out a large amount of their planning agreement work.

Rachel acts for a variety of clients including public-sector and private-sector developers, landowners and funders.

Rachel Lee and Emily Knowles – Both of these solicitors are extremely knowledgeable in their chosen field and I have utmost confidence in their ability to negotiate the best outcomes for borough residents. Both Rachel and Emily are a pleasure to work with and I’d highly recommend them to other local planning authorities.

Legal 500 2023

  • Corporate Clients
  • Housing Sector
  • Local Government
  • Environmental law
  • Highways
  • Planning appeals and disputes
  • Planning applications and agreements
  • Real Estate, Planning and Regeneration
  • Regeneration and development
  • Lead lawyer acting for the planning authorities (LPAs) in negotiating and drafting complex section 106 agreements for large urban villages/new communities and Garden villages. This includes the former Wisley Airfield site, which comprised hybrid/outline applications for between 1,500 to over 3,000 new homes a local centre, community facilities, employment space and associated infrastructure.
  • Negotiation of a section 106 agreement acting for a county council for a mixed scheme for 1,214 new residential units, ensuring the developer delivers on the construction of a new primary school.
  • Acting for various London Boroughs on large housing and large housing estate renewal projects, large housing schemes including complex viability review mechanisms.
  • Acting for the LPA relating to large commercial London schemes including a world leading MedTech cluster, securing section 106 obligations bespoke to the scheme with demonstrable social value benefits.
As the government consults on national section 106 templates for medium-sized housing sites, Emily Knowles, Rachel Lee and Katie Millar explain what this means for local planning authorities. Section 106 agreements are essential to the delivery of housing and infrastructure- they secure the planning obligations that make otherwise unacceptable development acceptable in planning terms. Yet... Read more
With the opportunity to adopt new supplementary planning documents now over and a new National Planning Policy Framework in force, local planning authorities face a fundamentally changed landscape. In this article, James Goldthorpe, Rachel Lee and Emily Knowles from our planning team consider the implications for local planning authorities seeking to secure developer contributions through... Read more

It is almost inevitable that large scale developments will be spatially phased in their build out. Flexibility to accommodate a degree of change is needed to enable larger schemes to proceed in a timely manner. A “drop in” permission, making changes to one part of the larger original development site, is one of the tools…

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The Government (whoever that may be post-4 July) will undoubtedly still encourage and promote, via the planning system, the wireless infrastructure agenda for the UK. Lots of us want and rely on this technology, yet the siting and installation of the masts and equipment required to support the system still raises objections. Most of the…

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