The UK Court of Appeal ruled in the case of environmental activist group Friends of the Earth versus the Secretary of State for Transport over the proposed expansion of Heathrow was unlawful because under the UK governments own climate change commitments.
Lord Justice Lindblom, Lord Justice Singh and Lord Justice Haddon-Cave ruled that moves by Heathrow Airport to expand via a third runway under the “Airports National Policy Statement: new runway capacity and infrastructure at airports in the south east of England” (ANPS) was unlawful.
The ruling dismissed a number of the arguments put forward by Friends of the Earth, such as the Heathrow expansion contradicting the UK Habits Directive, however the justices did conclude it contradicted government policy relevant to climate change.
The ruling said:
“To a substantial extent, for the reasons we have set out, we agree with the analysis and conclusions of the Divisional Court. Like the Divisional Court, we have concluded that the challenges to the ANPS must fail on the issues relating to the operation of the Habitats Directive, and also on all but one of the issues concerning the operation of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive.
However, we have concluded that the challenges should succeed in one important respect. This relates to the legislative provisions concerning the Government’s policy and commitments on climate change, in particular the provision in section 5(8) of the Planning Act, which requires that the reasons for the policy set out in the ANPS “must ... include an explanation of how the policy set out in the statement takes account of Government policy relating to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change”.
The Justices went onto to state that the ANPS was not produced as the law requires, “and indeed as Parliament has expressly provided. The statutory regime for the formulation of a national policy statement, which Parliament put in place in the Planning Act, was not fully complied with.”
`The ruling instead said that The Paris Agreement ought to have been taken into account by the Secretary of State in the preparation of the ANPS and an explanation given as to how it was taken into account.
“That, in our view, is legally fatal to the ANPS in its present form. As we have explained, the normal result in a successful claim for judicial review must follow, that the court will not permit unlawful action by a public body to stand. Appropriate relief must therefore be granted, as normally it will be where unlawfulness in the conduct of the executive is established.”
The UK government is expected to appeal.
UK Court of Appeal throws Heathrow expansion plans into doubt
