R(Goesa Ltd.) v Eastleigh Borough Council (expansion of Southampton Airport)

In June 2021, Eastleigh Borough Council granted planning permission for the expansion of Southampton Airport, including through the extension of an existing runway. That decision was challenged on public law ground by GOESA Ltd, with “GOESA” standing for the Group Opposed to the Expansion of Southampton Airport. Giving judgment in May 2022, the High Court dismissed the claim. The council had not breached the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations. The focus of these regulations was to require the council to reach conclusions on the likely significant effects of the proposal on the environment. No criteria or thresholds had been set by which to measure the “significance” of the GHG emissions from a particular proposal. Nor was the court referred to any guidance for assessing the acceptability of that contribution, whether expressed as a percentage of national budgets or sectoral targets or otherwise. The EIA Regulations focus on assessing the significance of an environmental effect. The legislation does not deal with the acceptability of an effect identified by environmental information. That is a matter of judgement for the decision-maker, not a hard-edged point of law. On the basis of current policy and law it was permissible for a planning authority to look at the scale of the GHG emissions relative to a national target and to reach a judgement, which may inevitably be of a generalised nature, about the likelihood of the proposal harming the achievement of that target. There was nothing unlawful about the inevitably broad judgement reached in the present case. Further, the council did lawfully asses the cumulative effects of emissions from the expansion of Southampton Airport together with proposals for developing Bristol, Stansted and Leeds Bradford airports. In August 2022, the Court of Appeal refused GOESA permission to appeal, bringing the litigation to an end.