Environmental lawyers fire warning to councils on legal risk of air pollution “inaction”

March 25, 2019

Environmental law charity ClientEarth has warned 38 local authorities in England and Wales of the legal risk of inaction on air pollution.

ClientEarth has sent the councils a briefing, which outlines councils’ responsibilities and warns that if their final proposals do not satisfy the necessary legal requirements, they will be open to legal challenge.

The organisation, which won three legal cases against the UK government over illegal levels of air pollution across the country, said it was “concerned by the slew of missed deadlines and ineffective measures put forward by local authorities”.

It said it had not ruled out further legal action to tackle toxic air in towns and cities across the country, claiming that “the lack of meaningful progress on the issue is proof of the government’s flawed approach of passing the buck to ill-equipped local authorities”.

ClientEarth lawyer Katie Nield said: “We are extremely concerned, given the urgency of the situation, at the glacial progress of action from local authorities. Judging by what they are telling residents, many have missed government deadlines to submit plans and some have consulted on potentially legally compliant action before scaling back proposals and delaying decisions.”

The organisation said many local authorities had failed to meet ministerial deadlines for publishing their final plans.

Nield added: “The courts have been clear that the UK Government is obliged to ensure plans are put in place as soon as can be, but instead ministers seem to be setting deadlines and simply watching them sail past.

“It is now almost a decade since legal limits came into place and they are still being broken in large parts of the country. Every week that goes by without action is another week where people are breathing in harmful air pollution which damages their health. This is particularly true of vulnerable groups like children.

“Aside from the legal situation, this is a moral failure from politicians at all levels. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the central government to sort this out but local authorities should not be using government inaction as an excuse not to do all they can to protect people from breathing dirty air.”

Local authorities ClientEarth has written to:

The following five were those originally mandated to come up with business plans for clean air zones after ClientEarth’s first case concluded in 2015:

Derby City Council
Leeds City Council
Birmingham City Council
Nottingham City Council
Southampton City Council

The following set of 23 were ordered to come up with plans after ClientEarth’s second case:

Basildon District Council
Bath & North East Somerset Council
Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council
Bristol City Council
Bury Metropolitan Borough Council
Coventry City Council
Fareham Borough Council
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council
Guildford Borough Council
Manchester City Council
Middlesbrough Borough Council
New Forest District Council
Newcastle City Council
North Tyneside Council
Rochford District Council
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
Rushmoor Borough Council
Salford Metropolitan Borough Council
Sheffield City Council
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
Surrey Heath District Council
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council
Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council

The next eight are those which produced plans and found that air pollution in their area was worse than first thought, so now have a further deadline later this year to produce plans: