The Impact of the Environment Bill and the Environmental Review Process on Environmental Judicial Review: Is Environmental Review a Viable Route to Challenging Environmental Decisions or Another Barrier to Judicial Review?

摘要

This article examines the proposed process of Environmental Review, created by the Environment Bill 2019/2020, and explores what impact this process might have on environmental judicial review and whether this effectively achieves the Environment Bill's aim of replacing EU oversight. Environmental judicial review is widely recognised as being an imperfect tool for the protection and enforcement of environmental rights. The Environment Bill was intended to address environmental governance gaps following the UK's withdrawal from the EU and to replace the institutional oversight that the EU provided. Such oversight is to be provided by the Office for Environmental Protection ("OEP") through its enforcement powers and a process called Environmental Review. Many had hoped that the OEP and Environmental Review would address the issues with environmental judicial review and would provide a more effective method of environmental oversight. This article contends that the Environmental Review process, though addressing some of the issues with environmental judicial review, in fact may act as a barrier to environmental justice and fails to provide either effective oversight or effective enforcement of environmental rights.