Green campaigners are launching a legal challenge to try to stop the UK government’s huge road-building programme, arguing that ministers should review their policy in the light of ambitious new climate targets.
The Transport Action Network pressure group filed the papers for a judicial review in the High Court on Friday as it sought to force transport secretary Grant Shapps to reassess the policy that was set out in a 2014 document called the “National Policy Statement on National Networks”.
The timing of the action is awkward for the government, which this weekend is holding a virtual summit billed as a “launch pad” for next year’s COP26 global climate talks, which the UK is hosting in Glasgow.
The campaigners have hired the same legal team that won a legal challenge on environmental grounds against Heathrow airport’s plans for a third runway earlier year.
Key to the government’s defence of its road-building programme is the argument that it is planning to…