Nancy Collins

Nancy specialises in prison law, having been the senior solicitor at the Prisoners Advice Service for 6 years before joining Bhatt Murphy.

Nancy Collins joined Bhatt Murphy in June 2007. She qualified at Clifford Chance in September 2000 and worked in their media and communications department before leaving to work at Liberty as a locum solicitor in February 2001. Whilst at Liberty Nancy gained experience in actions against the police and deaths in custody.

In August 2001 Nancy became the senior solicitor at the Prisoners’ Advice Service, where she gained extensive experience in all aspects of prison law including oral hearings before the Parole Board, disciplinary hearings before independent adjudicators and judicial review. Whilst at the Prisoners’ Advice Service Nancy contributed to the Prisoners’ Legal Rights Group Bulletin and taught many prison law courses.

Notable cases include Edwards v United Kingdom (2002) 35 EHRR 19 in which the European Court of Human Rights clarified the requirements of an Article 2 compliant investigation and R (Day) v SSHD [2004] EWHC 1742 Admin, a successful challenge to the timing between parole board reviews for a post-tariff lifer. She has recently acted in a number of important prison related judicial reviews including R (Shaheen) v SSJ [2008] EWHC 1195 Admin and R (Poku) v Parole Board [2009] EWHC 1380 Admin.

Nancy co-authors the six-monthly updates on prison law for Legal Action with Simon Creighton and Hamish Arnott. She also contributed to Prisoners: Law and Practice (LAG 2009).

Before studying law, Nancy obtained a 2:1 BA (Hons) French and Italian at the University of Leeds. She is a member of the Prisoners’ Legal Rights Group, Liberty and the Human Rights Lawyers Association.