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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: environmental/page/22/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
DPP v M [2020] EWHC 3422 (Admin) (15 December 2020) — judgment here
On 15 December 2020, the High Court ruled that a positive conclusive grounds decisions by the Single Competent Authority (“SCA”) that a defendant was a victim of trafficking and modern slavery was admissible evidence in a criminal trial where the defendant raises the defence in s.45 Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“MSA 2015”) that the act took place by reason of slavery or exploitation.
BACKGROUND
M was a 15-year-old boy with no history of offending. On 16 May 2019, he was at a KFC in Tooting, an area of London to which he had he had no connection, along with two other boys (MP and KM) who were known by police to be gang members and habitual knife carriers. When the group were searched by police officers, M had 5 wraps of cocaine, 2 wraps of diamorphine (heroin) and a hunting knife in his possession.
On 23 May 2019, M was referred to the National Referral Mechanism (“NRM”) by Lewisham Children’s Social Care. On 21 August 2019 the Single Competent Authority (“SCA”) made a positive conclusive grounds decision that, on a balance of probabilities, M had been recruited, harboured and transported for the purposes of criminal exploitation.
Janowiec and Others v Russia (Applications nos. 55508/07 and 29520/09) – read judgment
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that it had no competence to examine complaints relating to the adequacy of Russia’s criminal investigation into events that had occurred prior to the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in 1950: namely the Katyń Massacre of 1940.
The applicants were relations of 12 victims of the Katyń Massacre. They had been executed by the NKVD together with over 20,000 other former Polish Army officers, government officials, and landowners. A criminal investigation into the deaths ran from 1990 until 2004 when the Chief Military Prosecutor decided to discontinue ‘Criminal Case no. 159’ on the grounds that any alleged suspects were dead.
The Divisional Court has ruled that the Senior Coroner for Inner North London acted unlawfully in adopting a policy that resulted in Jewish and Muslim families facing delays in the burials of family members, contrary to their religious beliefs. The policy was held to amount to an unlawful fetter upon her discretion, and also to be irrational, to breach Articles 9 and 14 of the ECHR and to amount to indirect discrimination contrary to the Equality Act 2010 (“EQA”).
No death will be prioritised in any way over any other because of the religion of the deceased or family, either by the coroner’s officer’s or coroners.
It has resulted in a blanket refusal of requests for expedition in circumstances where a religion stipulates that burial must take place within a short period of death. Such requests have arisen in cases where the family is waiting for the coroner to decide whether a post mortem examination is required.
The Bussey Law Firm PC & Anor v Page [2015] EWHC 563 (QB) – read judgment
The facts of this case are simple. A defamatory comment was posted on the claimant’s Google maps directional page, implying that he was a “loser” as a lawyer and that his firm lost “80%” of cases brought to them. The defendant claimed that someone must have hacked in to his own Google account to put up the post.
There were jurisdictional complications in that the firm is situated in Colarado but these need not concern us here as Sir David Eady, sitting as a High Court judge, allowed the trial to go ahead in England. The real question was why any third party would have gone to the trouble of hacking into the defendant’s Google account in order to post the offending review; if the objective were merely to hide the hacker’s identity from the claimants, there would be the simpler option of setting up an anonymous Google account. This would in itself render the would-be publisher untraceable, and especially if it were done from a public computer. Continue reading →
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
His speech was an unusual one, given that judges generally refrain from commenting on the important issues of the moment. Lord Judge was supportive of Lord Justice Leveson and of the Press Complaints Commission, both targets of criticism in the context of the inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press and the Leveson inquiry.
On Friday 6th April, Public Interest Environmental Law (PIEL) UK hosted their 12th annual conference. The student-led association, which was founded in 2007, is inspired by the US conference of the same name which has attracted ever-growing numbers of delegates since it began in 1983.
This year’s conference boasted three panels packed with academics and practitioners, and a keynote address from Richard Macrory CBE. In light of the movement’s snowballing strength, it seemed apposite that this year’s conference be themed ‘Environmental Litigation: Has the Green Revolution Reached the Courts?’
In fact, speakers ranged beyond this brief, partly due to recognising that it would take the coalescence of strategic litigation with procedural reform and public interest to truly ignite the ‘green revolution.’
Plans to build a fourteen mile, six lane motorway through the Gwent Levels south of Newport to relieve congestion on the M4 have been scrapped by the Welsh government. The announcement by first minister Mark Drakeford was welcomed by environmentalists, local residents and small businesses who opposed the scheme at last year’s public inquiry. Alasdair Henderson, Dominic Ruck Keene and Hannah Noyce from 1 Crown Office Row with other barristers from Guildhall Chambers (Brendon Moorhouse) and Garden Court (Irena Sabic and Grace Brown) represented Gwent Wildlife Trust and an umbrella of other environmental objectors in the proceedings which lasted from February 2017 to September 2018. All these barristers acted for free. Environmental NGOs such as the Environmental Law Foundation, should be particularly pleased by Drakeford’s acknowledgement the campaigners’ efforts:
In this episode three environmental law experts gather to discuss how people without deep pockets can avail themselves of the Aarhus Convention to take legal action in respect of environmental harms like pollution and sewage. Environmental law, a subject that barely existed thirty years ago, is now an established part of English law and is where international law, government policy and public interest litigation often meet head-on. Rosalind English introduces the panel moderator, Richard Wald KC, who chairs ELF. Emma Montlake, an executive director of the charity, helps to ensure that environmental decision making is both robust and transparent. And Carol Day of Leigh Day solicitors is one of the most experienced lawyers in bringing environmental challenges through the courts. The full citations of the cases discussed in this episodes is set out below.
River Action intervention in The National Farmers’ Union v Herefordshire Council & Ors [2025] EWHC 536 (Admin) (10 March 2025) (Admin)
The King (on the application of) The Badger Trust, Wild Justice v Natural England and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2025] EWHC 2761 (Admin)
Wildlife & Countryside Link intervention in C G Fry & Son Limited (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (formerly known as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) and another (Respondents) UKSC/2024/0108
Council for National Parks intervention in New Forest National Park Authority v (1) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (2) Mr SimonLillington [2025] EWHC 726 (Admin)
HM Treasury v Global Feedback Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 624 (Global Feedback Ltd has now changed its name to Foodrise Ltd and PTA to Supreme Court granted on 31 October 2025 (see here)
Wild Justice v Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and Adventure Beyond Ltd (Interested Party) [2025] EWHC 2249 (Admin)
Commission v. UK, Opinion of Advocate-General Kokott, 12 September 2013 read opinion here
Forgive me for returning to this case, but it raises all sorts of questions. On the face of it, it concerns 2 specific environmental directives, but it has implications for costs generally in environmental cases.
And why do I go on about costs? Because the prospect of being seriously out of pocket deters even the most altruistic environmentalist if they lose. Some may be purely NIMBYs, but most have a rather wider sense of the things that matter and that is not just about protecting their own assets. Claimants are normally up against public authorities and/or developers, so the balance of power has to be struck in the right place between them.
Michael John Smith (appellant) v Fronterra Co-operative group Ltd and others [2024] NZSC 5
This appeal to the New Zealand Supreme Court concerned strike out of a claim in tort (comprised of three causes of action) relating to damage caused by climate change. The question was whether the plaintiff’s claim should be allowed to proceed to trial, or whether, regardless of what might be proved at trial, it is bound to fail and should be struck out now.
The implications of this ruling could be enormous, particularly if the English courts decide to follow the New Zealand model. In its conclusion to this lengthy judgment, the New Zealand Court observed that “the principles governing public nuisance ought not to stand still in the face of massive environmental challenges attributable to human economic activity. The common law, where it is not clearly excluded, responds to challenge and change in a considered way, through trials involving the testing of evidence.”
The plaintiff was an elder of a Maori tribe and climate change spokesman for a national forum of tribal leaders. The defendants were all New Zealand companies involved in an industry that either emitted greenhouse gases or which released GHG when burned.
The draft Agreement – here – is a mere 585 pages. No harm in trying to read it, or the bits of it which are of particular interest, because in that respect you may be well ahead of some of the rather noisier politicians.
It may seem a bit premature to say too much about it, not least because of the political turmoils, but it promises that
(1) the EU and UK will “use their best endeavours” to have a future trade agreement concluded six months before the end of the transition period in December 2020; this is extensible on agreement thereafter;
(2) but that if this is not the case the EU and the UK could “jointly extend the transition period” for an unspecified period.
Quite a lot has happened in the 6 months since my post here on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). TTIP is a proposed trade agreement between the US and the EU, with negotiations on the substantive issues between the EU and the US underway in Brussels at the moment.
The proposed treaty may have significant effects on EU regulation, but let’s concentrate on whether TTIP should contain specific provisions enabling investors to suegovernments.
The ground for action would be governmental “expropriation” of investments – and that may mean anything from telling a cigarette manufacturer that he must have to change what his packets look like, (with consequential loss of profits), to imposing new environmental standards on a power generating plant.
This mechanism is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS. Our government seems astonishingly sanguine about this, on the basis that it has not yet been sued successfully under existing bilateral treaties with similar provisions. This does not seem to be a very profoundly thought-through position to adopt, if the proposed system has its problems – which it plainly does, when one compares it with traditional claims in the courts. Put simply, why wave it on?
In the UK and EU, there are a lot of statutes and rules about climate change, and relatively little strategic litigation. Hop over the Pond, and we see exactly the reverse, a reflection of different political dynamics with the hostility of the US Congress to climate change legislation.
It is interesting to look at some of the US cases, not only because they lock horns with one of the big issues of our time, but also because they reflect a common problem the courts face in deciding their role when confronted with science which is, or is said to be, controversial.
We should start with the groundbreaking decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (549 U.S. 497 (2007)). The US Supreme Court held that the US Environmental Protection Agency had a duty to use its existing powers under the Clean Air Act and assess whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles were a danger to the environment and, if that was the case, to regulate them. In the litigation, and contrary to the opinion of two of its previous general counsels, it had denied that it was under a duty to do so. This judgment was a highly important ruling, as it meant that no new legislation was necessary to get the climate change ball rolling. Thereafter the EPA turned to how it should regulate GHG emissions, as we shall see.
Sajid Javid’s reported objections to the Government’s pre-election proposals on countering extremist ideas uncover just how controversial the new laws will be. He had objected, it seems, to a mooted expansion of Ofcom’s powers to take pre-emptive action to prevent the broadcast of programmes with ‘extremist content’ before they are transmitted.
That specific proposal may no longer be part of the proposed laws, but Ofcom is likely to be given powers to move against broadcasters after transmission. And there will be plenty else to discuss when the legislation is likely announced in the Queen’s Speech next week.
The main points have already been revealed when last week the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary announced that new laws will be introduced ‘to make it much harder for people to promote dangerous extremist views in our communities.’ As always in counter-terrorism laws, the relationship between freedom and security will be brought into sharp focus when the proposals are debated. In this piece we set down some of the questions which we think warrant attention. Continue reading →
R (on the application of Evans) v The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [2011] EWHC 1146 (Admin) – Read judgment
The High Court has found that the Ministry of Justice, when making a decision to cease the state’s funding of judicial review challenges on purely public interest grounds (apart from one exception), took into account the fact that to do so would reduce the number of decisions being made which were not in the government’s interests. Unsurprisingly, the Court to concluded that the decision was unlawful and should be quashed.
The Applicant applied for judicial review of a decision by the Respondent to amend the Legal Services Commission (LSC) Funding Code, which funds litigation for those who meet certain criteria. The effect of the amendments, which were introduced in April 2010, was to prevent public funding by the LSC for judicial review proceedings (challenging decisions of public bodies) which were pure public interest challenges. That is, where the Applicant stood to gain nothing from the litigation and was bringing it solely to promote a particular public interest. The one exception was in environmental cases.
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Janowiec and Others v Russia (Applications nos. 55508/07 and 29520/09) – 
The Divisional Court has ruled that the Senior Coroner for Inner North London acted unlawfully in adopting a policy that resulted in Jewish and Muslim families facing delays in the burials of family members, contrary to their religious beliefs. The policy was held to amount to an unlawful fetter upon her discretion, and also to be irrational, to breach Articles 9 and 14 of the ECHR and to amount to indirect discrimination contrary to the Equality Act 2010 (“EQA”).
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found 
R (on the application of Evans) v The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [2011] EWHC 1146 (Admin) – 
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