Britain’s oldest environmental NGO – Environmental Protection UK – to close
Mon 28 November 2011
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Environmental Protection UK (EPUK), Britain's oldest environmental NGO is to is to cease to operate as a fully staffed and funded organisation at the end of the financial year next March. The organisation has been forced to close after cuts in local authority budgets reduced its income which it has been unable to make up from other sources.
Formed as the Coal Smoke Abatement Society at the end of the nineteenth century, Environmental Protection UK (also formerly the National Society for Clean Air) provided expert analysis on air quality and, more recently, contaminated land and waste issues. But over the past two years, the Brighton-based charity has faced severe financial challenges due to government cuts in funding to local authorities, which purchase its products and services.
The outgoing Chief Executive James Grugeon said: "Local authorities have been forced in the past year to make very difficult funding decisions, following severe cuts to their budgets imposed by central Government. Within this economic environment, EPUK has faced an uphill battle to survive which, ultimately and despite our best efforts, we haven't been able to win.
"As ever, it is a question of funding and support. Without it, crucial work to highlight the public health crisis of air pollution across the UK will simply not happen."
Caroline Lucas, a vice president of EPUK and MP for Brighton Pavilion (quoted in The Guardian) said: "I am deeply saddened that EPUK has fallen victim to the devastating coalition cuts being forced on local authorities. The closure of the UK's oldest environmental NGO is a serious blow to the green agenda, and to the ongoing campaign to tackle the UK's growing air quality crisis."
The charity said that despite its imminent closure it would continue to run its recently launched Healthy Air Campaign, which highlights air pollution's public health impacts, as well as provide services to members and honour its commitments to existing projects and partners.
Trustees are hoping to maintain a skeleton organisation run by a network of volunteers after next March. Meanwhile, EPUK'S Scottish division is looking at whether it can survive as a stand-alone body.
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