The High Court has ruled in favour of the Secretary of State’s decision earlier this year to overturn the advice of planning inspectors and permit further massive expansion of Luton Airport.
The Luton Airport case is a watershed moment for the UK’s climate future. The government’s expert advisers have warned that we cannot meet Net Zero while continuing to expand aviation on the basis of partial or outdated climate assessments. Yet the Government is still approving airport growth using narrow CO₂ accounting that excludes inbound flights and ignores aviation’s much larger non-CO₂ warming impacts.
The Supreme Court’s Finch ruling made it clear that all significant climate effects must be assessed, even if scientific methods are still developing. LADACAN’s challenge demonstrated that legislation requires rational, evidence-based decision-making that properly assesses and accounts for aviation’s full climate impact. The High Court’s decision cements a planning system that looks backwards while the climate crisis accelerates.
On 24th December we filed for permission to appeal against what appears to be a faulty High Court judgment. The outcome matters not only for Luton, but for every future airport proposal in the UK.
Our grounds for appeal are:
– that the Judge erred in concluding that the climate impact of the greenhouse gas emissions had been assessed, whereas they hadn’t been because of a faulty justification based on double-counting;
– that the Judge erred in concluding that the emissions from inbound flights had been assessed, despite asserting that meaningful assessment was not possible;
– that the Judge erred in concluding that the assessment of non-CO2 effects was lawful; and
– that the Judge erred in concluding that the Government’s duties under the Climate Change Act amounted to a pollution control regime.
We are sincerely grateful for the wide support towards the cost of this action, which is essential to clarify the law on what amounts to an existential issue given the worsening effects of climate change and the imperative to achieve Net Zero by 2050.
This is a watershed moment, with the costs of climate change damage increasing and still no realistic and proven pathways to decarbonise aviation. We urge all those who care about reducing the environmental impacts of aviation to donate to our crowdfunding appeal by clicking this link: Crowdfunding appeal