Air pollution hearing fast-tracked

ClientEarth action

ClientEarth, the group of environmental lawyers who have successfully challenged the Government to date about its sloth like action on tackling air pollution, are set to be back in court on 18 and 19th of October.  A High Court Judge recently approved their request for the process to be speeded up.

Last year they were successful in getting the Supreme Court to order the Government to produce an Air Quality Action Plan by the end of 2015.  The Government met this target but as expected produced an action plan that was underwhelming it is ambition and would fail to improve air quality “as quickly as possible”.  The plan was also based in some instances on dodgy data as it claimed air pollution in Brighton was already under legal limits when in reality it is still well above them, if improving.

Nevertheless, even though the process has been speeded up, it is likely that waiting for 4 months before holding the hearing will result in a further 13,000 premature deaths occurring in that period due to air pollution.  So even this speeded up process is costing lives and proceeding far too slowly.