A High Court judge has issued a strong rebuke to the Environment Agency (EA), saying that it should do more to “address its legal duties” to protect a child from fumes leaking from a landfill site.
It’s a case which, according to the judge, clarifies the EA’s duties under the Human Rights Act.
The case has been brought on behalf of five-and-a-half-year-old Mathew Richards, who lives near a landfill site in the Staffordshire village of Silverdale. The site operates under a licence granted by the Environment Agency.
According to the ruling, handed down at the High Court yesterday (16 September) by Mr Justice Fordham, Mathew’s lawyers say he is “a vulnerable child who is particularly badly affected by hydrogen sulphide emissions” from the landfill site.
So much so that, according this his doctors, “he faces the development of the condition chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which would dramatically shorten his life expectancy”.
His lawyers argue that the EA’s failure to take action over the leaking gas violates Mathew’s human rights, including his right to life.
In a judgment of more than 50 pages, Fordham J examined the nature and extent of the health hazard caused by the landfill site.
“What I am doing in this judgment,” he said, “is considering how the public authority regulator – the EA – has been dealing with a licensing and supervisory function in relation to the landfill site’s owners’ activities.
In conclusion, he found that the EA was not doing enough. “I am not satisfied, on the evidence, that the EA has yet addressed its legal duties in the way that it must,” he said.
“There is an obvious and pressing public interest imperative that it must do so, as a matter of urgency.”
He said that his finding will mean that the EA will take action and “make a very real difference so far as the air which Mathew (and his community) breathes.”
R (on the application of Mathew Richards) v the Environment Agency and Walleys Quarry Ltd (interested party)
Queen’s Bench Division (Fordham J) 16 September 2021
