The government is facing a legal challenge over plans to permit housebuilders in England to allow sewage pollution “through the back door”.
The campaign group Wild Justice, along with the law firm Leigh Day, have submitted plans for a judicial review over what they term an “unlawful attempt to use guidance to introduce a change that was defeated in the House of Lords last year”.
Currently, in sensitive areas such as the Lake District and Norfolk Broads, housebuilders have to prevent extra sewage going into waterways, either by updating infrastructure or by buying biodiversity credits, which improve the local natural area and counteract the extra pollution. The regulations were first enacted by the EU in an attempt to prevent damaging buildups of algae and other plants that can choke off aquatic life.
Last year, the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, proposed an amendment to the levelling up and regeneration bill, which would strike the directive from the statute book. This would have allowed developers to ignore the rules.
The king signed Magna Carta because his aristocracy was against him. Your regular peasant was eating shit meanwhile.
Pretty sure I said I know that wasn’t the way things really went and I don’t need a history lesson 😋 I was taking creative license to inspire the masses, because real examples are pretty thin on the ground. If you have some, please by all means share with the rest of us and I’ll update my Rolodex of historical references.
All jokes aside, I’m operating off half-remembered secondary school lessons from several decades ago so I’m sure there’s a lot of events I’m missing!