Report Launch: Is there a case for Reforming UK Environmental legislation?

On Wednesday May 23, the School of Law hosted the launch of a major project report: “The State of Environmental Law in 2011-2012: Is there a Case for Legislative Reform?” The report is the result of a major UK Environmental Law Association project spanning three years, which involved research collaboration with King’s College London and The Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University. 

At the launch event, the project team presented its findings, and the head of the Better Regulation team at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Steven Gleave, presented a response to the report, drawing particularly on recent developments of the Government’s Red Tape Challenge in relation to environmental regulation.

In broad terms, the report highlights a number of specific problem areas and practices that adversely affect the coherence, integration and transparency of environmental legislation in the UK. It also highlights problems with legislative scrutiny processes.  It finds that: “Incoherent, poorly integrated or opaque laws can cause uncertainty, wasted time and increased costs, impede understanding and awareness of the requirements, and undermine access to justice and the rule of law. For the law to work for a better environment, it is crucial that governments and regulators address these issues”. In his foreword, UKELA’s President, Lord Carnwath, refers to “the contrast between the relative simplicity of the basic objectives [of environmental law], and the complexity of the machinery by which we try to give them effect”.  The report includes a range of recommendations for improving the quality, effectiveness (including on cost grounds) and acceptability of UK environmental legislation.

For full details of the report, see:

For the research reports underlying this final report, as well as the speaker presentations at the event, see the UKELA website.