Thank you to everyone who has supported my cases.  Mrs Justice Thornton heard the cases at the High Court on May 10^th and 11^th, and here is an update.

First of all, my legal team led by David Wolfe, Kings Counsel, made an absolutely superb case, and laid out why the law requires cumulative environmental assessment, and how it clearly was not done for carbon emissions for each of the three A47 schemes (including with the proposed Norwich Western link road) close to Norwich.  I was interviewed on Radio Norfolk on the morning of the first day, and this interview is worth listening to as it explains the details simply. 

However, it was astounding that in their case Government lawyers tried to uproot the principle established in case law that projects need to have cumulative environmental assessment when they are separate but related projects, as the schemes in these cases plainly are.  The Government tried to argue it all ways – first claiming that cumulative assessments had been done when, of course, they had not been.  And then claiming that such assessments would be optional - down to discretion - anyway.   As David Wolfe, KC said to the Court if these submissions from the Government were to be accepted then, in the future, it would completely undermine the assessment of cumulative impacts generally across the whole planning system – for all sizes and types of project, and not just for carbon emissions but all environmental issues such noise, biodiversity and air pollution.

As the Government try to scrap environmental law with the Retained EU Bill, my cases are now key to keeping cumulative environmental assessment as a vital part of the planning system.

The legal fund is still short of the money needed to pay the legal fees so far.  Through your great generosity, the fund is around two thirds of where it needs to be, so I have another £25,000 to raise to reach the £75,000 target.  Please donate more money to the legal fund if you possibly can.   Every donation helps defend cumulative environmental assessment from being scrapped as the Government apprears to want to do.  

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/

Just a quick update on the eve of tomorrow's Hearings on the cases.  The Court has just informed us that the Hearings will be in Court 19 at the High Court RCJ- Google Map. The Judge is Mrs Justice Thornton. 

I wish to thank everyone for the support so far.  These cases have brought many people together - over 1000 people have donated on this site - thank you.  We still have more to raise, and please donate (and donate again) if you are able to do so. 

If you wish to join us at the Court, there will be a gathering at 0930, Wednesday May 10th outside the Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand - map in link above.  If you wish to go into the Court for the hearing, please let me know of andrewboswell AT fastmail DOT co DOT uk just so I have an idea of numbers.  

If you wish to read my lawyer's skeleton arguments, please click here Skeleton

Huge thanks, all the best, Andrew

My legal cases on transport carbon emissions go to the High Court NEXT WEEK.

Thank you for supporting these cases, and for the many donations made by well over 1000 people now.  I still need to raise further funds for the legal fund, so please donate again if you can (Link).  Thank you.

Do join us outside Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday May10th at 0930 for a gathering before the hearings.  The RCJ are in the Strand (Map).  I am hoping that you may be able to come inside if you want to hear the court proceedings too.  Please contact me on Andrew DOT boswell AT fastmail DOT co DOT uk if you would like to do so, so I have an idea of numbers.

One update is that very recently National Highways produced a bat licence.  This is what the company had been unable to provide before the approval decision for the scheme last summer despite the presence of rare bats including barbastelles.  Whilst my legal team had prepared very strong arguments around whether the decision to approve a road such as the A47 Tuddenham scheme could ever be lawful in the absence of a bat licence, we have not be able take these legal arguments forward to the Court on this occasion.  This is disappointing as the arguments were general and would have helped with other similar development cases. Clearly, National Highways realised this in producing the required licence at the last minute to avoid the issues reaching the Court. 

Just a reminder that the cases relate to four large road schemes (three A47 schemes) around Norwich as in the map below, and include areas of high biodiversity, and the Wensum and Tud chalk stream rivers.

A very quick update here to share this recording of BBC Politics East where I speak on the legal cases.  As the Conservative MP Duncan Baker says in the interview toward the end of the clip "these are sensible cases" to require environmental assessment to be properly done.  

I am very grateful for all the support so far and my lawyers and I are preparing in the final submissions before we go to the High court on May 10th.  

Please share widely and donate to the legal fund if you can 👉 https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/

If you wish to go to the High Court on May 10th, please let me know on andrewboswell@fastmail.co.uk

(By the way, the article has got the headline figure wrong - it is a massive 130MtCO2 as I explained last week - I am trying to get article corrected).

Last week, the scale of the deception around UK road transport emissions became starkly clear.  My legal cases are all about challenging this deception and putting an end to it.  I am so, so grateful for all the contributions which you have already made and as my legal team move towards the Court hearing in just five weeks time, I ask you again that you give whatever support you can.  Many, many thanks.  

Sorry longer than usual, but I need to get a bit technical in this week’s update to explain why road transport emissions are literally trashing the UK's climate commitments under the Paris agreement.  Nearly 3000 pages across 45 documents, before lots of numbers in lots of spreadsheets, were released by the Government on March 30^th -  in response to last year’s successful legal challenge against the Net Zero Strategy.  However, just the couple of extracts below show the extent of the issues with transport emissions – the sector already responsible for over one quarter of UK carbon emissions.  

Government technocrats got the baseline emissions for transport badly wrong in the NZS.  The only sector with significant changes in the new Carbon Budget Delivery Plan (CBDP) which seeks to meet the requirements of last summer’s legal judgement is transport, see this extract from the Powering Up Britain Technical Annex:

This shows that for the 15 years of the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th carbon budgets (2023-2037), a massive 130 million of tonnes of CO2 has been added to the baseline – meaning that ambition for reducing emissions in the transport sector has had to be scaled down (see this tweet from the Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee).   

130 million tonnes of CO2 is a very large miscalculation.  The amount of carbon is around the total annual economy carbon footprint of Nigeria (or the Phillipines, or the Netherlands) in 2020.

What does this huge change to the figures mean for UK Climate targets?  The CDBP explains the impact on the UK’s National Determined Contribution – our pledge to reduce emissions by 68% (from 1990 levels) by 2030 made at the Glasgow COP.  This promise is no longer possible to meet according to the CBDP:

What is striking is that the CBDP is short of around 8 million tonnes of CO2 emission reductions in 2030 which is less than the baseline adjustment for transport in that year of 9 million tonnes.  So the entire shortfall for our international obligation comes from the transport sector miscalculation.

Transport campaigners have said for decades that if transport emissions are not dealt with by serious policy, then other sectors will have to make deeper cuts to compensate.  Now we see that happening clearly.  Virtually all emissions reduction policy for transport is based around electric vehicles and increasing biofuels.  This is a prescription for failure as serious demand reduction and model shift is required too, but not happening (instead we see further devastation of public transport year on year), and EVs won't deliver a significant contribution in time to help with the 2030 and 2035 climate targets.

To meet our NDC under Paris, other sectors now have to find 8 million tonnes of emission cuts, originally promised by the transport sector, or we fail the international community.

What’s more, under the Paris agreement, the UK is expected to submit a new NDC in 2025.  How can the UK submit a more ambitious NDC when it can’t even meet the existing pledge?  Serious work in transport decarbonisation is needed now, this decade, to be able to submit a stronger NDC in 2025.  

Angry?  Despite, this utter failure, the UK Government continue to expand the roads programme which adds new emissions from construction and operation of faster roads carrying more traffic.  Only legal cases like mine can start to turn this around by requiring proper carbon assessment.  Please support the cases.    

 https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/

You are reading this because you know how important protecting our children's future is.  You may have already supported the cases -  a big Thank You if you have. These cases could change how road schemes are assessed for carbon emissions and protected species, and we are now just six weeks from the full High Court hearing.  

Turning around Government policy and practice is never more important after the IPCC report last week.  I've been reading the summary report and this graphic really moved me.  And it shows why climate litigation cases like these are so important.  Considerable warming is locked in even on the "very low" scenario, but the Government's policies are currently headed much more into the very dark red/purple area.  (see more)  

We have to rapidly bend the emissions curve down: that is why we have to start by not adding new unnecessary emissions from building unneeded roads.  Let's stop road building which wrecks nature and climate! 

My lawyers are working on the final arguments for Court, and I still have to raise more funds for their legal costs. Please continue to share this fundraiser link widely  Stop road building that wrecks the climate and nature (A47BNB/Norfolk) (crowdjustice.com) and please donate again if you can. I am very grateful for anything you can do to support these vital cases.  Huge thanks for all you have done already!

Andrew

PS: Some other things to share

• This facebook link on how far off the Government are with their net zero plans
• This tweet thread on the barbastelle bats or this tweet thread on the carbon aspects

The IPCC has just published a "final warning" report, called by UN chief Antonio Guterres a "survival guide for humanity". 

The message cannot be clearer - Govts in rich nations must step up for the Climate now.  

Our work to get genuine climate action from our UK Govt starts here.  Thank you for your support for my legal cases for honest carbon assessment of road schemes.  I am thinking of the dire warnings of the IPCC report, as I write to ask for your help again.  

My lawyers will be Court for two days in May.  £75000 is needed to fund these cases, and to help this happen, please pledge again if you can, and even consider making a monthly or fortnightly pledge for the next crucial months.  Please consider also  

• Share this facebook post on how badly the Govt is off track with its Net Zero Strategy with the transport sector being the worst
• Retweet this tweet - also on the "Net Zero gap" in transport
• Emailing five of your friends to asking them to support these cases too
• Do say that you have pledged to encourage others!  

We know that until Govts are honest about how carbon emissions are assessed and accounted, they cannot make the real policy changes necessary.  Litigation via these legal cases is an effective tool to transform road policy.  Roads are effectively greenwashed through the planning system with the real climate and nature impacts being underestimated.   Here is a chart from last week's Green Alliance's Net Zero Policy tracker - transport in the biggest emissions sector, yet has least committed policy.

Thank you for your support! 

My cases go to the High Court on May 10^th and 11^th, now just 10 weeks away, and my lawyers are busy drafting their skeleton arguments for the Court.  More funds are needed to support their vital expert work, so please donate if you can. 

This week’s update follows Mark Harper, Secretary of State for Transport announcing delays to several large road schemes in the second roads programme (RIS2) yesterday.    Whilst road campaigners have widely welcomed this, the decision was made solely on economic grounds – what Mr Harper called “headwinds”: inflation, the Ukraine war, and supply chain disruption.   

Like so much with this Government, the elephant in the room – the Climate Emergency - was ignored.  Mr Harper should have been thinking of the catastrophic impact on the climate that these schemes would have.  If he had, he would have cancelled them completely.  

The Government are acting in denial - as if they had never introduced the UK net-zero legislation.  They deny that carbon generating road schemes damage the climate and even claim that they don't impede delivering net-zero.  This is a false claim possible only because of the sneaky assessments of carbon emissions for road projects which systematically underestimate the climate impacts, and which I am legally challenging.    

For example, in my legal cases, four new big roads are planned close to Norwich which will dramatically increase carbon emissions, but the climate impacts have been deliberately underestimated for planning by considering each scheme in isolation.  As in this Guardian article, “You’ve got an ideal situation here where you should do a cumulative [carbon] assessment … but they have gone to every length to salami-slice it and look at each scheme’s emissions separately.”

My cases show this breaches the law, and it is happening on every scheme in planning in the UK, so the cases supported by this crowdfunder are of national importance: if successful, they would put an end to this deliberate downplaying of the impact of road building on climate change.

Our atmosphere is already overloaded with carbon emissions. We simply cannot afford any additional emissions if we are to avoid ever-increasing climate change impacts such as the heatwaves and wildfires experienced last summer, and on-going droughts affecting food production. This means the carbon emissions from each new road scheme must be properly assessed, and please donate to my cases to help make this happen.

Let's not allow the burning of our world to continue through bad decisons.  Thank you

The High Court hearing on the three A47 cases to protect the climate and nature from road building is now very close.  Although the Court set dates of May 10th and 11th, National Highways recently have applied for a Court order for an earlier date. 

This could make it harder for my legal team, but my lawyers are working flat out to ensure we are ready to do everything we can to win this case whenever the hearing is held.   Preparing the final arguments for the cases is incurring considerable costs, and please donate whatever you can today to help see these cases succeed in the High Court.  

My previous updates have largely been on how these cases highlight that the assessment of carbon emissions for new roads is deeply flawed, allowing schemes impacting the delivery of the UK climate targets to get nodded through.  In the Climate and Nature emergency,  has got to stop ... now ... and thank you for your support in getting the cases to this point on carbon.

However, did you know that we also have a legal ground about whether decisions on such large infrastructure projects are protecting rare species and complying with the Habitats Regulations as they should?   This is because the Secretary of State also nodded through the A47 North Tuddenham to Easton scheme in the absence clear evidience that it would not severely impact the rare barbastelle bat (see note at end for more on these bats).  

This is what the Secretary of State said when approving the scheme in August 2022:

However, Natural England has said the scheme did not satisfy the vital Favourable Conservation Status test in December 2021.

And then, when asked days before the decision if they could say that there were no impediments to a bats licence being issued to allow construction of the scheme, Natural England said the following:

Despite this, the decision to nod the scheme through was made.  I believe that this is unlawful and breaches law for planning decisions on large infrastructure to comply with the Habitats Regulations.  Please donate whatever you can today to help my lawyers get this decision turned over in the High Court.

Notes of barbastelle bats:

The barbastelle bat is on the red list of endangered species and is listed as near threatened. Little is known about this bat and there are few sightings of it. Its range is limited to Southern and Central England and Wales and there are an estimated 5000 individuals.  Read more here 

The bats in my case above, at risk from the A47 road, are from the same super-colony of barbastelle bats threatened by the close-by close by Norwich Western Link road.

My A47 cases are heading for the High Court in May.  Thank you to all of you who have supported these vital cases for climate and nature.  My lawyers are carefully reviewing the responses from the Government, and I need to more than double the funds raised so far for the cases.  I recently updated the target to £50,000 to reflect the current funding needs, although more than that is needed overall.  

This update has a couple of pieces of related good news below.  Please give what you can to help these cases succeed and change how the Government appraises road schemes for climate and nature.   

Here are the good news items ... 

First, the Welsh Government made the landmark announcement today that dozens of roads projects are to be scrapped following a series of tough tests on their impact on climate change.  Read more here: Welsh road building projects stopped after failing climate review.  The UK Government lags massively behind the clear thinking of the Welsh Government which has placed the climate and ecological emergency at the heart of decision making.  However, if successful, my cases will require the UK Government to consider climate change properly in their decisions too. 

Second, last month after months of prevarication the DfT finally responded to an Freedom of Information request from Prof Greg Marsden for the calculations underpining the Government Transport Decarbonisation Plan (TDP).  Prof Marsdem has published some thoughts on his initial analysis here:  The route to Net Zero: DfT assumptions look well off course.

All last year when I was giving evidence to the planning examinations on various road schemes, the incredible claim being made by road promoters was that the TDP would deliver all the necessary carbon savings to meet net zero.  Or in other words ... we can continue to build roads and the TDP will sort out the carbon.  The graph below has become known as the "fuzzy" graph, and road promoters were saying because the glossy TDP policy document exists with this graph that ... hey presto ... the road system would switch from the blue to green paths.   

From this FoI response, we now can be sure that there is no inevitable success for the TDP,  and that the UK is already so off track on Transport Behavioural Factors and roll-out of electric vehicles, that the TDP is at a very high risk of not delivering the first stage to 2035.  As Prof Marsden's article says "We are already behind the game and the implications of a past decade of inaction means the Carbon chickens have well and truly come home to roost." 

These examples show we are winning in making the case for proper carbon appraisal. Please help my cases win too, and give what you can to help.  

Thank you, Andrew

The cases for the three Norfolk A47 schemes will be joined into one case for the High Court, and grounds on both 1) no cumulative assessment of the climate impacts of the carbon assessment**  and 2) that the bat licencing relating to the Norfolk super-colony of barbastelle bats was not done correctly will now be heard in the High Court.

** Last week, we had the carbon deception of the Govt ploughing ahead with the Cumbria coal mine.  Carbon deceptions happen daily in the way these road schemes are assessed, smaller but they add up: only a relatively small figure of carbon just for the scheme, calculated in isolation, is compared against the whole national carbon budget.  

My cases seek to make it very clear in law that road schemes need to be assessed cumulatively. This is vital to tackling climate change and getting the Government to take the right actions for decarbonisation of transport.     

This crowdfunder at https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/ supports all three cases.  

I am very grateful for your continuing support.  

Many thanks, Andrew

REMINDER OF THE THREE SCHEMES, THREE CASES

Consider this example, this case.  Currently four road schemes are being brought forward close to Norwich, each increasing traffic and emissions

However each scheme has been put through planning in isolation, assessing only its environmental impacts.  The total impact is never considered.

I now have legal challenges against three of these schemes in the High Court saying they should all be assessed together.  Considering them in isolation is unlawful. 

The legal cases are building momentum and we are due to go to Court in the next month to get permission for the full Judicial Review hearing across all three schemes (ie treating them as one case).

Please help me fund this case at this critical point, help me get the case all the way to the High Court.

Please back the legal case to  here👉https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/

Let's stop this deception which is trashing our climate.

Please forward and share, Andrew 🙏🙏