The UK High Court ruled Wednesday for ClientEarth [advocacy website], a law-based advocacy group, in its latest air pollution challenge [press release] against the UK government. The group brought the action alleging that plans, prepared by the Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) [official website], to lower the levels of air pollution by 2020 were not in line with an earlier decision [judgment, PDF] in ClientEarth’s favor. In 2015 the UK Supreme Court ordered the government to comply with legal air pollution limits “as soon as possible.” In this subsequent action, the High Court found that the five-year plan, created by Defra as a response to the 2015 judgement, was not the earliest date possible to achieve pollution containment.

In March the law firm filed [JURIST report] papers stating that the UK experiences 40,000 early deaths from air pollution every year and that “the government is in breach of a Supreme Court order to clean up air quality, having failed once against to take appropriate action in the face of this public health crisis.” Last year the Supreme Court ordered the government to submit new air quality plans to bring down air pollution. The law firm said [Reuters report] that the first plans were inadequate to decrease nitrogen dioxide emissions.