Lee, Robert; Stech, Radoslaw --- "Access to Environmental Justice in England and Wales: Funding Representation for Court Reviews of Administrative Action" [2011] ELECD 628; in Steele, Jenny; van Boom, H. Willem (eds), "Mass Justice" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Mass Justice

Editor(s): Steele, Jenny; van Boom, H. Willem

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849805063

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Access to Environmental Justice in England and Wales: Funding Representation for Court Reviews of Administrative Action

Author(s): Lee, Robert; Stech, Radoslaw

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

7. Access to environmental justice
in England and Wales: funding
representation for court reviews of
administrative action
Robert Lee and Radoslaw Stech*

1. INTRODUCTION

Environmental pollution might be considered one of the more likely of
social concerns to give rise to multi-party litigation. The impact of pollu-
tion on environmental media affects large numbers of people who rely on
water, air and land for the very basics of life. Significant harm can result
from human exposure to contaminants, but many groups would wish to
act on behalf of the environment to remedy harm caused to a wide range
of other receptors including species and their habitats. The diffuse nature
of environmental pollution is abundantly clear from the impacts of green-
house gas emissions and climate change may yet generate group litigation
on a scale barely imagined in the past.1
Yet in the UK, as this chapter will demonstrate, prospects for large scale
environmental litigation have been narrowing rather than widening over a
number of years. The reasons for this are largely driven by the difficulties
of funding of litigation, described as the single greatest barrier to envi-
ronmental justice.2 This is particularly so given the common law rule that
costs follow the event so that a successful party to litigation may expect
to recover money spent on fees and disbursements from the unsuccess-
ful party. This rule might be said to raise the costs of litigation3 and may
discourage cases proceeding to trial4 so that cases may ...