Once more the courts are asked to intervene in UK transport policy on the grounds of ‘climate change objectives’ and other supposed issues, while the roads get ever more overcrowded.
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Transport Action Network (TAN) has been granted permission for judicial review of the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’ decision to go ahead with the £27 billion roads programme (Roads Investment Strategy 2 or RIS2), reports Ekklesia.
Mrs Justice Lieven gave the go ahead for the review, saying that TAN’s case that Mr Shapps had not properly considered the impact of the multi-billion pound roads-building scheme on climate change objectives, including the carbon budgets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Paris Agreement, was arguable.
The Judge also declared the case to be “significant” which means it will be fast-tracked and should be heard at the High Court by early November.
Represented by Leigh Day solicitors, TAN has further asked that the decision should also be allowed to scrutinised on the grounds of air quality and lack of strategic environmental assessment, which the first judge initially refused.
It argues that the Secretary of State has a duty “actively to drive down levels of air pollution, not merely to ask himself whether air quality impacts of a given development are too severe to permit it to proceed”.
It argues that strategic environmental impact is grounds for review because although the judge said RIS2 “is an investment document rather than a planning policy document for future development” and therefore would not fall within the Strategic Environmental Assessment regulations, RIS2 is “a document containing elements of (or akin to) planning policy” because it constrains consideration of the need for road projects further down the line.
Importantly, these arguments will be made in the context of there being a mandatory legal duty placed on the Secretary of State to have regard to the effect of RIS2 on the environment, yet RIS2 having never been subject to any sort of environmental impact assessment, let alone being consulted on or subject to parliamentary debate.
Full report here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
August 6, 2020 at 03:45AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 