TV personality Chris Packham is asking a judge to decide whether it was lawful for the Government to change its environmental policies.

“We've been granted judicial review – we're taking the Government to court over the delay and abandonment of key net-zero policies,” Packham wrote on X, which might not strictly be what the Government has done, but in X it is de rigueur to use such inflammatory language.

The Government delayed some measures in the race to net-zero in September, mainly due to the cost-of-living crisis that was, in turn, triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These included delaying the ban on the sale of new ICE cars from 2030 to 2035, loosening the phase-out of gas boilers by 2035, and dropping a requirement for energy efficiency upgrades for homes.

Friends of the Earth has made a series of similar legal challenges, including a successful challenge in 2022 that ruled that the Government’s climate action plan had breached the Climate Change Act 2008 (CCA) and ordered a revision to its strategy, but this revised strategy, the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, published in March 2023, is again being challenged as inadequate.

Packham added: “At this crisis point for nature and climate we need robust leadership that listens to best informed advice, not short-termism and politicking.”

Perhaps more worrying for any government is that Packham has done this with a public fundraising campaign, reaching £75,000 to mount a judicial review in the High Court. If any policy can be met with several crowd-funded legal challenges on slightly different grounds and cannot change policy as circumstances change, then there will be no flexibility of action. Conversely, as Packham states: “This case will set a precedent that our leaders cannot act 'on a whim' without facing the legal consequences.”

---