Government must expedite air quality plans following Client Earth legal victories
Mon 21 November 2016
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Client Earth, a campaigning environmental law group, has won a case in the High Court against the Government over the failure to tackle air pollution across the UK. The presiding judge said that the Environment Secretary had failed to take measures that would bring the UK into compliance with the law “as soon as possible” and said that ministers knew that over optimistic pollution modelling was being used.
In a subsequent High Court ruling, Client Earth also won a second verdict when the judge stated that the Government's timetable for delivering an effective plan was too slow and must be published in eight months, meaning it will have to release a draft plan by April 2017,
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said (reported by the BBC) that it accepted the Court's judgment.
ClientEarth had won a separate, Supreme Court ruling against the government in April 2015 in a judgment which ordered ministers to come up with a plan to bring down air pollution to within legal limits as soon as possible. However, ClientEarth was dissatisfied with those proposals, and took the Government to the High Court in a judicial review.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Garnham agreed, who listened to two days of argument at the High Court last month, questioned Defra’s five year modelling; saying it was “inconsistent” with taking measures to improve pollution ” as soon as possible.”
The judge ruled that the Government’s 2015 Air Quality Plan failed to comply with the Supreme Court ruling or relevant EU Directives and said that the Government had erred in law by fixing compliance dates based on over optimistic modelling of pollution levels.
Defra’s planned 2020 compliance for some cities, and 2025 for London, had been chosen because that was the date when ministers thought they’d face European Commission fines, not which they considered “as soon as possible.”
ClientEarth CEO James Thornton said: “The time for legal action is over. This is an urgent public health crisis over which the Prime Minister must take personal control. I challenge Theresa May to take immediate action now to deal with illegal levels of pollution and prevent tens of thousands of additional early deaths in the UK.”
During evidence, the court heard that Defra’s original plans for a more extensive network of Clean Air Zones in more than a dozen UK cities had been watered down, on cost grounds, to five in addition to London.
ClientEarth air quality lawyer Alan Andrews added: “We hope the new Government will finally get on with preparing a credible plan to resolve this issue once and for all. We look forward to working with Defra ministers on developing a new plan which makes a genuine attempt to achieve legal limits throughout the UK as soon as possible.
“We need a national network of clean air zones to be in place by 2018 in cities across the UK, not just in a handful of cities. The Government also needs to stop these inaccurate modelling forecasts. Future projections of compliance need to be based on what is really coming out of the exhausts of diesel cars when driving on the road, not just the results of discredited laboratory tests.”
The Government is also being forced to deliver an effective plan to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis within eight months, after the judge rejected a longer timetable as “far too leisurely”.
Following the ruling in early November, the Government had refused to agree on the eight-month timetable proposed by ClientEarth for a new plan, saying it needed until September next year. Mr Justice Garnham ordered the Government to produce a draft plan by until 24 April 2017 and a final one by 31 July 2017.
A spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We are determined to cut harmful emissions. Our plans have always followed the best available evidence and we have always been clear that we are ready to update them if necessary. We can now confirm a timetable for updating our plans next year and further improving the nation’s air quality.”
The judge also ruled that ClientEarth can go back to court if it deems the government’s draft plan, due in April, is once again not good enough to cut pollution rapidly.
In early 2016 the LowCVP coordinated an initiative to enable collaboration between advocates of improvements in air quality and those tackling climate change. The initiative resulted in the signing of a communiqué announcing a basis for future collaboration.
For more information, see the LowCVP's Lower Carbon, Cleaner Air web page.
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