Charities hail High Court ruling on new costs rules in environment cases

Three charities have claimed victory in a High Court battle with the Ministry of Justice over new costs rules for environmental cases.

In The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Friends of the Earth Ltd & Anor v Secretary of State for Justice the Lord Chancellor [2017] EWHC 2309 Mr Justice Dove concluded that the rules would benefit from further clarification in key ways but that they would remain in place.

The Government was now required to make changes, the claimants – the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth – said.

The rules, introduced in February 2017, scrapped fixed costs limits on how much individuals and charities had to pay if they lost a case against a public body.

The claimants said the High Court ruling meant caps would still be fixed at the beginning of a case, “which will allow people or charities taking a case to know how much it will cost them at the start”.

In a statement following the judgment, the three charities said: “The verdict is an important victory in the battle for better access to justice in England and Wales.

“People who bravely stand up for nature by going to court can now do so in the knowledge that, once the costs are fixed, they will not be blindsided by a crippling legal bill they were not expecting and hadn’t budgeted for.”

In his ruling Mr Justice Dove also said he was satisfied that if a dispute in relation to the appropriate level of costs caps were to proceed to a hearing (as opposed to being dealt with on the papers at a time when the claimant's financial information would remain confidential) then the rules should provide for that hearing to be in private in the first instance.

“That is not simply for the same reasons that other analogous hearings identified in Practice Direction 39A are to be listed in the first instance in private to preserve confidentiality, but also because I am satisfied that the chilling effect which the prospect of the public disclosure of the financial information of the claimant and/or his or her financial supporters would have on the propensity to bring meritorious environmental claims would be in breach of the requirements to ensure wide access to justice set out in the CJEU jurisprudence….” he said.

“The reasons for the first hearing of a dispute in relation to the quantum of the costs cap to be heard in private apply equally whether the financial resources in question are those of an individual claimant or of a third party supporter.”

A more in-depth analysis of the ruling will appear on Local Government Lawyer later this week.