R(Dawes) v Secretary of State for Transport (Manston Airport)

In August 2022 the Secretary of State granted development consent for the development and reopening of Manston Airport. In reaching that decision he gave climate change neutral weight. That departed from the advice from his panel of planning inspectors, which had concluded the development would have a material impact on the ability of government to meet its carbon reduction targets, and that this weighed moderately against the proposal. The decision was challenged on public law grounds. On September 22, 2023, Justice Dove of the High Court gave judgment, dismissing the challenge. The Secretary of State had not acted unlawfully in his approach to the sixth carbon budget, which covers the period 2033 to 2037. It was said against him that he provided no analysis of the implications for the budget, that he failed to grapple with the quantified adverse effects of the scheme, and that the policies relied on were aspirational and their success inherently uncertain. However these were disagreements with the merits. The Secretary of State’s approach to the sixth carbon budget was clearly but succinctly set out. He relied on the new policies - in the Transport Decarbonisation Plan and the Jet Zero Strategy - as measures that would accelerate decarbonisation in the aviation sector and ensure carbon budgets were met without directly limiting aviation demand. He was entitled to rely upon his own policies, which had not been the subject of any successful legal challenge, to deliver the outcome for which they were designed, namely, achieving the carbon budgets which had been and were to be legislated without impacting upon aviation demand. Nor had the Secretary of State failed to take into account a relevant consideration, namely that the modelling work for the Jet Zero Strategy did not take account of Manston Airport. Seen context, the omission of Manston from that modelling was not of significance to the decision. The modelling was simply a tool to assess the validity of the policy and nothing more. The High Court held that the omission of Manson from the modelling was not significant. On May 21, 2024, Lord Justice Lewis of the Court of Appeal, also writing on behalf of Lord Justice Peter Jackson and Lord Justice Warby, dismissed the appeal, focusing solely on the need grounds. The appeal was heard on April 24, 2024, and refused, leaving the High Court's dismissal in place.