Fresh from a landmark legal win said to have ‘fundamentally changed’ the planning landscape around fossil fuels, Sarah Finch chats to LocalGov about her experience taking action on the climate – both in the courts, and as a councillor.
Sarah Finch says she can recall her shock when she heard about plans to drill for oil at Horse Hill, near Gatwick in Surrey and her former home. In 2019, two months after declaring a climate emergency, Surrey County Council granted permission for 20 years of oil extraction at the site.
As part of an Environment Impact Assessment, the council had been required to consider the likely ‘direct and indirect significant effects’ of extracting the oil. But what it did not include were the emissions that would be produced when the oil was later burned. On behalf of local campaigners Weald Action Group, Finch launched a legal challenge of this omission. The case went to the High Court, more than once, and then to the Court of Appeal – to no avail.
Vindication came for Finch and the group came last month. The Supreme Court ruled Surrey had acted unlawfully by failing to consider the emissions that would be produced by the ‘inevitable’ burning of the oil. Finch tells LocalGov that when the judgement was read, ‘it was so clear and it felt so logical, I just thought: “How could anybody have ever doubted this?”’
She believes the ruling gives planning authorities a great deal more clarity: planners now know that downstream greenhouse gas emissions must be counted as effects of fossil fuel extraction. But this clarification gives rise to a fresh challenge for councils. ‘Armed with that knowledge, they have to weigh up the pros and cons of approving the site.’
Finch is well aware that councils are in no need of new challenges, having served as a Green Party member of Reigate and Banstead Council from 2011-15. How did she find it? ‘Quite difficult,’ she says.
‘I don’t feel I had any influence on anything much as a councillor’, she tells LocalGov. When she was elected, there were just two Green members on the council, so they struggled to enact change by voting, and Finch says she felt most able to make a difference by helping residents in her ward.
She also found the rigidity of the planning system frustrating. She says: ‘You can make really good submissions on why something shouldn’t be approved on climate grounds, and then planning policy officers will just say: “That’s not a valid planning argument.”’
Should the climate emergency play a bigger part in the planning process? It should play a bigger part in everything, Finch argues.
So with first-hand experience of both the barriers facing councils and the time-consuming and expensive legal system, does she think climate action is best achieved through going into politics or through the courts? Or is direct action necessary?
‘I think you need to do all those things. Really we need political change on a massive level. Not just in the UK but everywhere. But that won’t come without the public demanding it: I think the Government will only respond if they see there’s strong public support.
‘All sorts of ways of generating that are valid, including direct action, although I do have reservations about tactics that actually seem to annoy and alienate people,’ Finch says.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the new Labour Government has withdrawn its defence of the planning permission granted for the Whitehaven coal mine in west Cumbria, and a decision to approve an oil drilling in the Lincolnshire Wolds has been quashed.
Meanwhile, the planning inspectorate has invited submissions on the significance of Finch’s case for Gatwick Airport’s expansion plans and the Government faces legal challenges of permission granted for the Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas projects.
‘I always hoped the Horse Hill ruling would have wider implications. I thought it might be too much to hope for,’ Finch says, and she’ll now look to see how the upcoming cases play out. ‘And if there’s any way I can be part of making sure it all happens, I’d like to do that.’
