Campaigners have launched a legal challenge to the Government’s roads policy on climate change grounds.
Transport Action Network (TAN) said it served a judicial review on the Department for Transport (DfT) after it ‘refused to rethink its roads policy’.
The move marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
TAN pointed out that in the last five years, transport emissions have become the biggest contributor to climate change, making up 28% of the UK’s domestic emissions, ‘almost all of these coming from roads’.
They argue that the 2014 National Policy Statement (NPS) for National Networks ‘effectively bans campaigners, planning inspectors and judges from considering the carbon emissions of individual road schemes’.
The NPS states that because the Government has ‘a credible plan for meeting carbon budgets...any increase in carbon emissions is not a reason to refuse development'.
However, TAN argues that in March transport secretary Grant Shapps ‘admitted he lacked such a plan’, when he described the Government’s Decarbonising Transport: Setting the Challenge document as ‘the beginning of a conversation to develop the policies needed to decarbonise transport’.
The Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan itself has been delayed.
TAN director Chris Todd said: ‘Since this roads policy was approved in 2014, surface transport emissions have barely changed and are now the biggest source of carbon. It’s clearly time for a radical rethink, rather than ramming through ever more damaging roads.
‘With the world’s attention falling on the UK as it co-hosts COP26, if our transport emissions don’t plummet quickly, our reputation will.
'Ministers have dithered for far too long and, unless they quickly concede, will end up being embarrassed in the dock next year. Long-term ambitions are welcome but will be undermined unless Grant Shapps takes his foot off the gas right now.'
The legal challenge also demands that the DfT reviews its policy on air quality, natural capital and good design, ‘in recognition of significant changes in all these areas since 2014’.
TAN said the case, which is separate to a legal challenge to second Road Investment Strategy, is expected to be heard in the High Court in early 2021.
The DfT has a policy of not commenting on legal action.
