News & Insights
Challenging consultations – What’s the significance of the Heathrow Third Runway decision?
Listening to the media, we may be forgiven for being a little confused as to who won, and who lost the High Court case about the proposed Third Runway for Heathrow.
According to the BBC, “Lord Justice Carnwath ruled the public consultation about expansion was invalid, because it was based on out-of-date figures”.
Yet a Department for Transport spokesman quoted in Saturday’s newspapers said that the judgment made no difference. “It is completely untrue to suggest the court ruling today means the Government has to re-run the consultation on Heathrow”.
We now have clearly established law that says that the Courts will not intervene to overturn consultations just because they are flawed. There must be something much closer to a ‘show-stopper’ or (in the words of Mr Justice Sullivan in the famous Greenpeace case on Nuclear Power in 2007) something had gone “clearly and radically wrong”.
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Rhion Jones
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