Search Results for: environmental/page/28/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)

Now, a win for the Chagossians

4 March 2019 by Dominic Ruck Keene

The International Court of Justice has given a near-unanimous opinion that the separation in 1965 of the Chagos Archipelago from the then British colony of Mauritius was contrary to the right of self determination, and that accordingly the de-colonisation of Mauritius by the United Kingdom had not been in accordance with international law. The ICJ held that Britain’s continued administration of the islands was an internationally wrongful act, which should cease as soon as possible.

This is the latest in a long series of cases concerning the Chagossian islanders, the last domestic one being Hoareau last month, which summarises decisions so far. Also see [120]-[130] of the ICJ’s opinion for the back-story.

Background

The Chagos Archipelago consists of a number of islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. The largest island is Diego Garcia, which accounts for more than half of the archipelago’s total land area.

Mauritius is located about 2,200 km south-west of the Chagos Archipelago. Between 1814 and 1965, the islands were administered by the United Kingdom as a dependency of the colony of Mauritius. In 1964, there were discussions between America and Britain regarding the use by the United States of certain British-owned islands in the Indian Ocean, in particular in establishing an American base on Diego Garcia.

This way, that way, the other way? Latest debate on Human Rights Act – Brian Chang

23 October 2015 by Guest Contributor

Those who want change should have to make the case for it, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC challenged her fellow panellists, at a recent event jointly organised by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and hosted by Bindmans. The panel was one of the most stimulating contributions of the year to the debate over the proposed repeal of the Human Rights Act and its replacement with a British Bill of Rights, featuring contributions from three members of the 2012 Commission on a Bill of Rights, a number of comparative perspectives including one from Australia, and even a call for what appears to be a written constitution.

Professor Jeffrey Jowell gave some preliminary remarks to set the scene for the panel discussion. He noted that the Bingham Centre had not adopted any particular position on the proposed repeal of the Human Rights Act (HRA) and its subsequent replacement with a British Bill of Rights, since the Conservative Government had not yet published its proposals. He then quoted a recent  report that the Government was planning to publish its consultation paper within the next two months, and then seek to legislate rapidly to get the British Bill of Rights on to the statute books by the end of next summer. Given this, he felt that the time was therefore right to hear a spectrum of views on the subject to assist the Bingham Centre in forming its position.
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Triumph for canal boat litigant in person

15 February 2013 by Rosalind English

 Moore v British Waterways Board [2013] EWCA Civ 73 – read judgment

A boat owner has won his appeal against the British Waterways Board preventing him from mooring his boats alongside his land on a tidal stretch of the Grand Canal.  Although he had no common law right to permanently moor the boats, he had committed no actionable wrong in doing so, and they were therefore not moored “without lawful authority” within the meaning of the British Waterways Act 1983. This judgment is an interesting and important endorsement of the principle in English law that everything is permitted except what is expressly forbidden. 

This key “rule of law” principle applies as much to the BWB as it does to the police and other law enforcement agencies.
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A stormy week for European human rights – The Roundup

21 February 2011 by Melina Padron

Analysis: Phil Woolas loses his seat and has judicial review refused

10 November 2010 by Rosalind English

Robert Elwyn Watkins v Philip James Woolas  [2010] EWHC 2702 (QB) 5 November 2010- read judgment

Update – read our 3 December 2010 post on his defeat in the administrative court

The Election Court has ruled that the Labour MP for Oldham knowingly and deliberately misled the constituency and as a result his election is void under Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act (1983).  Permission for judicial review of the decision has been refused.

The provision of the 1983 Act makes it an offence for anyone to publish “any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct” to prevent them being elected “unless he can show that he had reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true”.
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Intersectionality and equality: a view from the Constitutional Court of South Africa

26 November 2020 by Michael Rhimes

Mahlangu and Another v Minister of Labour and Others (CCT306/19) [2020] ZACC 24 (19 November 2020)

The house owner did not hear when Ms Mahlangu drowned in the family swimming pool. She was a domestic worker who had given 22 years of her life to tending to that family’s needs. Like most domestic workers in South Africa, she was a Black woman. Her daughter – Sylvia Mahlangu – sought to claim compensation from a statutory fund set up for employees who suffer injuries at work. Her claim failed because the legislation excluded domestic workers, like her mother, from the definition of ‘employee’ (see here, (xviii)(d)(v) excluding “a domestic employee employed as such in a private household” from compensation). 

The Constitutional Court of South Africa unanimously held that the exclusion of domestic workers from the statutory definition of employee breached the right to equality  (see here), and, by majority, the rights to dignity and to social security.  What I wish to focus on in this post is the diverging approaches to equality between the ‘dissenting’ judgment of Jafta J, on the one hand, and the ‘majority’ judgments of Victor AJ and Mhlantla J, on the other.  In particular, I wish to focus on the way Victor AJ and Mhlantla J relied on the concept of ‘intersectionality’ to understand what was truly constitutionally offensive about excluding domestic workers from the statutory definition of employee.  What follows is a necessarily high-level overview (at the risk, I accept, of being somewhat blunt). I hope the reader will understand that it is due to the constraints of space in a blog-post; I can only direct the interested reader to the judgments themselves. 

Latest twist on standard of review in Aarhus cases

3 May 2016 by David Hart KC

R (o.t.a. Dilner) v. Sheffield City Council [2016] EWHC 945 (Admin), Gilbart J, 27 April 2016, read judgment

A quick note on the latest Aarhus Convention point to come before the domestic courts.

In November 2015, I posted on the decision by Ouseley J in McMorn here that a gamekeeper’s challenge fell within the scope of Aarhus, and that as a result there should be a more intense scrutiny of the underlying merits of the claim than would typically be allowed under domestic public law principles.

The current case bears on the standard of review point. Mr Dilner and other environmental campaigners challenged the tree-felling policies of Sheffield City Council, and one of his arguments was that tree-felling required an environmental assessment under the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. This environmental claim fell within the protections conferred by the Aarhus Convention, and hence, it was said, required such an intense scrutiny. Mr Dilner relied upon Ouseley J’s reasoning.

Gilbart J robustly rejected the argument, and did not follow Ouseley J’s ruling.

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Watery rights and wrongs – and causation too

10 February 2016 by David Hart KC

R (o.t.a Seiont, Gwyfrai and Llyfni Anglers Society) v. Natural Resources Wales [2015] EWHC 3578, Hickinbottom J, 17 December 2015, read judgment and

Chetwynd v. Tunmore [2016] EWHC 156 (QB), HHJ Reddihough, sitting as a judge of the High Court, 4 February 2016, read judgment

This is a wintry double-bill on two recently decided cases about water quality, quantity, fish – and causation.

In the first, Seiont, Snowdonian anglers complained that the Welsh water regulator (Natural Resources Wales or NRW)  had misunderstood what was required by the Environmental Liability Directive in respect of Llyn Padarn, a freshwater lake the home of the Arctic charr, Salvelinus alpinus.  So they sought judicial review of NRW’s decision.

The main legal question was – did environmental damage within the Directive include slowing down recovery from previous damage, as the anglers argued, or was it confined to deterioration from an existing state (as the regulator had decided)?

Hickinbottom J held the latter, and the claim was dismissed.

In the second case, the claimant owners of fishing lakes in Norfolk said that their neighbours, in constructing rival lakes (without planning permission) had caused water levels to fall, and hence loss of fish and consequent income. Had that been established, the claimants would have had a claim for breach of statutory duty under section 48A Water Resources Act 1991. Such a claim, the judge held, would have been a strict liability one, in which foreseeability of damage played no part.

But the claimants lost on the facts, not before the judge had given an interesting analysis of the law of causation in this field.

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Defra’s generic plan for river clean up unlawful – local focus on water bodies needed

15 December 2023 by Rosalind English

Pickering Fishery Association by Martin Smith, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2023] EWHC 2918 (Admin)

Now upheld on appeal, Wednesday 2 April 2025: see the Office of Environmental Protection summary here

Brief Overview

This interesting case concerns a problem endemic to the manner of regulating water bodies under the Water Framework Directive and the regulations passed under it. This is what happened.

The anglers’ group Pickering Fishery Association raised concerns with the Environment Agency regarding the deterioration in the water quality of the Upper Costa Beck (“UCB), a ground water fed stream in North Yorkshire. It is described by the water campaigning group that acted for them in this litigation as “one of the best trout and grayling rivers in Yorkshire”.  They owned the leasehold and freehold fishing rights for most of the UCB. The UCB provides water to two fish farms and downstream is the Yorkshire Water’s water treatment works, which discharges back into the UCB. 

The claimant’s concerns included the impact of the recorded sewage overflows from Pickering Waste-Water Treatment Works; the level of sediment deposits resulting from the fish farm ‘suspended solids’ emissions; and the adequacy of the Environment Agency’s environmental permit conditions and other controls. Sewerage overflows from the water treatment works occurred over 250 times in 2020 and over 400 times the year before. 

Aarhus: UK seems to be in trouble again, this time with the CJEU

13 September 2013 by David Hart KC

Commission v. UK, Opinion of Advocate-General Kokott, 12 September 2013 read opinion here 

“It is well known that in United Kingdom court proceedings are not cheap” – a masterly understatement opening this opinion from our pictured AG to the CJEU about whether the UK system on legal costs complies with the obligation now in two EU Directives about environmental assessment and pollution control. The AG thinks that our way of doing costs is not up to scratch – with the origin of this obligation to be found in  the UN-ECE Aarhus Convention to which the EU has subscribed (albeit abstemiously when the EU comes to its own affairs – funny that). 

Bit of context – the EU has been warning the UK about costs for some years, with formal warnings going back to 2007 – and the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee has been doing likewise from Geneva. But the EU courts are more scary – all the ACCC can do is wrap the odd knuckle. And on this topic, we have one individual case which has been to the CJEU (Edwards, where the UK does not look in good shape – see my post), and now this case saying that the UK has a systemic problem with excessive costs.

But one thing we must remember. The law according to the AG looks at the law before the UK had a go at sorting the problem out – see my post, as above. on the new UK regime. There is some important stuff about how the old system did not comply, which will have implications for the new rules.

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Aarhus: CJEU rules against UK costs regime

18 February 2014 by David Hart KC

Commission v. UK, judgment of CJEU, 13 February 2014  – read judgment – UPDATED

Litigation costs are troublesome, but they are particularly difficult in environmental cases where the claimant is not necessarily pursuing his private interests. This case is the result of a long-running and successful campaign by NGOs to persuade the EU Commission to investigate UK environmental legal costs. The main finding may not bother the UK too much, because wisely it saw this one coming and changed costs rules in environmental public law cases. A subsidiary ruling about cross-undertakings has also been more recently included in a rule change.

All of this comes from Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention (to which the EU has subscribed) which says that members of the public should be able to challenge environmental decisions, and the procedures for doing so shall be adequate and effective and “not prohibitively expensive”.
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A robust restatement of the principles of nuisance

27 March 2012 by Rosalind English

Barr v. Biffa, CA, 19 March 2012, read judgment

The reverse suffered by the claimants in the noisy motor racing case case before the Court of Appeal last month was something of a body blow to common lawyers and environmentalists. So this latest development in nuisance litigation should be welcome news.

As David Hart’s report  suggests, the Court of Appeal pulls no punches in its critique of the High Court judgment which dismissed the claims of 152 households on the basis that a landfill operator had abided by the terms of its permit. Reasserting the private law rights of individuals in nuisance actions, Carnwath LJ observes that this case has been

a sad illustration of what can happen when apparently unlimited resources, financial and intellectual, are thrown at an apparently simple dispute such as one about nuisance by escaping smells. The fundamental principles of law were settled by the end of the 19th century and have remained resilient and effective since then.

The common law, he notes, is best when it is simple. And in this judgement he returns nuisance to the simple statement of reciprocity and neighbourliness where it belongs.

There are a few propositions – not many – in Carnwath LJ’s judgment which will serve as a clear, short checklist for the viability of a nuisance action.
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When is a policy not a policy: Supreme Court on Heathrow expansion

21 December 2020 by David Hart KC

R (o.t.a Friends of the Earth et al) v. Heathrow Airport Ltd [2020] UKSC 52 – read judgment

In February 2020, the Court of Appeal decided that the Government policy on airport expansion at Heathrow was unlawful on climate change grounds. The Supreme Court has now reversed this decision.

The policy decision under challenge was an Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS). An NPS sets the fundamental framework within which further planning decisions will be taken. So, in traditional terms, it is not a planning permission; that would come later, via, in this case, the mechanism of a Development Consent Order (DCO), which examines the precise scheme that is proposed. The ANPS (like any NPS) narrows the debate at the DCO stage. Objectors cannot say, for example, that the increase in capacity could better be achieved at Gatwick. Government policy has already decided it shouldn’t be.

The ANPS was made in 2018 by the Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling), after many years of commissions and debates about airport expansion.

The other major policy player in this litigation was the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This was concluded in December 2015, and was ratified by the UK on 17 November 2016. The Paris Agreement commits parties to restrict temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The UK’s domestic climate change legislation derives from the Climate Change Act 2008. The Planning Act 2008 (setting out the NPS system) required government in a given NPS (a) to explain how it takes account of its policy on climate change (s.5(8)) and (b) to exercise its NPS functions with regard to the desirability of mitigating and adapting to climate change (s.10).

The challenges debated in the Supreme Court revolved around (1) these two sections of the PA 2008, (2) a debate about the impact of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2011/92/EU), and (3) claims that the SoS has failed to take into account long-term (post-2050) and non-CO2 emissions.

One curious element of this appeal is that it was Hamlet without the Prince. After seeking to defend the case in the CA, the SoS did not appear in the SC, where Heathrow did all the running. Whether this non-appearance by the SoS was anything to do with the Honourable Member for Hillingdon’s undertaking (Boris Johnson MP) some years ago to lie in front of the bulldozers before the third runway was laid is of course unknowable. But as we shall see, this did not stop Heathrow’s arguments winning the day. So, possibly, central government’s policy objective achieved without political risk.

10 cases that defined 2019

19 December 2019 by Jonathan Metzer

And so, we reach the end of another year. And what a year it has been. As well perhaps the most tumultuous period in British politics for decades, this year saw the first ever image taken of a black hole, a victory for the England men’s cricket team at the World Cup, the discovery of a new species of prehistoric small-bodied human in the Philippines and signs that humpback whale numbers in the South Atlantic have bounced back thanks to intensive conservation efforts.

And the law? Well, rather a lot has happened really. As the festive season draws near, what better way is there to celebrate than to rewind the clock and relive the 10 cases which have defined 2019?

Right of appeal against refusal of a residence card: the conclusion

10 September 2019 by Jonathan Metzer

The question of whether non-married partners and wider dependent relatives (e.g. grown-up children) of EEA nationals (known as ‘extended family members’) have a right of appeal against a decision by the Home Secretary to refuse them a residence card under the EEA Regulations has had a fraught recent history.

Now, as a result of the final decision of the Upper Tribunal in Banger (EEA: EFM – Right of Appeal) [2019] UKUT 194(IAC), full appeal rights have been restored to ‘extended family members’ whose applications are refused.