Green campaigner loses High Court fight

An environmental activist who challenged the approval of a 25-year drilling plan near Gatwick Airport has lost a High Court battle.

Sarah Finch objected to Surrey County Council’s decision to allow a well six miles from her home in Redhill, Surrey, to be extended and raised concern about the impact of greenhouse gas.  

She said council bosses had failed to assess ‘the indirect greenhouse gas impacts’ and did not take into account environmental protection objectives. 

But a judge, who considered evidence at a High Court hearing in November, on Monday dismissed her claim and indicated that the council had behaved lawfully and rationally

Mr Justice Holgate said it was impossible to say the council’s judgment, that greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of refined fuels ‘were not an environmental effect of the proposed development’ was, as a ‘matter of law, irrational’.

Ms Finch’s lawyers said Surrey County Council should have considered the ‘full climate impact’ of the 25-year drilling plan when they lodged the complaint this year.    

However council bosses, who gave Horse Hill Developments permission to extend drilling at Horse Hill, Surrey, just over a year ago, disputed Ms Finch’s claim.

Lawyers representing the council said Ms Finch’s approach to the interpretation of environmental impact requirements was ‘misguided’.

They suggested that it was for the council to judge what ‘indirect effects’ were likely to have a ‘significant effect’ on the environment.

Friends of the Earth had backed Ms Finch’s challenge and said the case could have widespread implications.