Despite winning a review of the roads planning policy last year, unfortunately, we were not successful in the last part of this challenge: to get the policy suspended whilst under review. Although disappointing, it wasn't entirely unexpected as challenging a Secretary of State's discretionary powers is incredibly hard to do. However, given what was at stake, we felt it was worth trying so that schemes such as Lower Thames Crossing, A27 Arundel Bypass, A303 Stonehenge and A5036 Port of Liverpool Access Road, wouldn’t have their carbon emissions effectively dismissed in the planning system.

However, we have not given up. We are busy keeping pressure on the Government to change its approach on transport. We have written to Grant Shapps to re-open the RIS2 roads programme because so much has changed since it was published, with concerns about safety on Smart Motorways and delays to many schemes, amongst other things. We’re encouraging him to scrap the roads currently in it.

We’ve also sent a legal letter about the A66 Northern Trans Pennine upgrade, which is effectively 8 schemes in one over a 50 mile stretch of road. Here National Highways has been acting to reduce participation in so called public consultations, which are not on their website or social media and are not publicised except to some locals. Separately we’ve sent a legal letter about the climate impacts of Smart Motorways as they are being built without any planning oversight.

We are also just about to launch a traffic reduction campaign to keep the pressure up on the Government. You can keep in touch with what we’re doing by signing up to our monthly newsletter or visiting our website.

Thanks for your support

In the summer we successfully got the Government to admit that it needed to review the national roads policy, after having twice refused to do so over the last year. Our challenges, enabled by public support, clearly helped change the Government's mind and forced it to face up to reality.

However, when announcing the review, the Government said that the outcome wouldn’t conclude until Spring 2023. In the meantime, its climate busting policies would remain in place, allowing it to carry on approving new roads with impunity. This would be four years after Parliament declared a climate emergency, hardly delivering the swift and urgent action needed to tackle climate change.

This delay of course is essential for the government to be able to approve a further 20 road schemes, including the largest new road for a generation, the Lower Thames Crossing. As the Times reported documents released to us show that the day before publishing its Transport Decarbonisation Plan in the summer, ministers sought advice from officials about “minimising the chilling effect on road building and completion by 2023”. Hardly inspiring confidence that tackling climate change was at the top of their agenda.

Other damaging schemes that could be bulldozed through by 2023 include the A303 at Stonehenge (despite the quashing of planning permission by the High Court), A5036 Port of Liverpool Access Road, A27 Arundel Bypass, A417 Missing Link, A358 Taunton to Southfields, A38 Derby Junctions and a whole tranche of schemes on the A47 in Norfolk and more.

That’s why we are seeking leave to challenge Grant Shapps’ refusal to suspend the national roads policy while the review is taking place. It is essential that those sections causing most harm, such as the one saying that carbon emissions are not a reason to refuse planning permission, are suspended, so that new roads can be properly scrutinised during the planning process. The fact that we’re even having to contemplate this action as COP26 draws to a close, shows how big a gap there is between rhetoric and action.

It's been over a year since we first asked the Department for Transport (DfT) to review its roads policy. A policy that rubber stamps damaging road schemes and frankly belongs in the last century. In October the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, ignored his officials’ advice to review it and that's the decision we were able to challenge thanks to the generous support we received.

Then, last December the Prime Minister decided to ratchet up the UK's climate ambition, promising a 68% cut in carbon by 2030. So we were hopeful when government lawyers told us that Grant Shapps decided he needed time for a rethink. However, in March this year he again decided not to review his roads policy, even though his department is failing on climate change.

Due to legal advice, we brought a fresh legal challenge of this recent refusal, as the decision we were originally challenging had been superseded. Our new case should have an even greater chance of success as climate targets grow stronger.

We are also arguing the DfT should pay our costs from the first case, as the decision we challenged has effectively been withdrawn. If we’re successful we’ll be able to use most of the money we’ve already raised towards our second challenge, but we won't know the result of that for some time. Even then, we will still be short of our £30,000 target which ideally, we need to raise by the end of May to be able to respond when the DfT files its defence.

We are very grateful for previous donations and, whether or not people are able to donate, please share this CrowdJustice page far and wide. Concern about the climate emergency has only grown since we started this challenge. As The Times has reported, our new case could become an even more important precedent than we first thought, so long as we have the funding to continue.

Finally, we're able to tell you that Transport Secretary Grant Shapps ignored official advice and refused to review the Government's outdated road policy! The Government tried to keep this information from us and prevented us from going public with the news. However, now this bombshell has been exposed on the front page of the Guardian today, we are free to talk about it. 

In March last year, you may recall, we wrote to Grant Shapps asking him to pause the roads programme and to review the National Policy Statement (NPS) on roads. We never received a reply to our letter although when we chased it up we were told that Grant Shapps would consider whether to have a review in the autumn.

In October he decided not to review the NPS. However, the Government waited nearly 2 weeks before telling us, leaving us with only 4 weeks to lodge our application for judicial review. Then it refused to give us any information despite repeated requests. Not until the day before we were due to submit our case, did it suddenly release the advice which exposed that Grant Shapps had ignored his officials. Even then the Government refused to release his reasoning.

The Department for Transport has now informed us that Grant Shapps will reconsider whether he now wants to review the NPS. A decision is due in early March.

At this stage we don't know what this it means. He might agree to review the NPS on all our grounds, or only some of them. Or he may refuse to suspend parts of the NPS which he agrees to review, such as on climate change. (Suspending these sections would stop him using these out-dated policies to continue to approve damaging roads while the review takes place).

With your help we hope to keep up the pressure and to continue to highlight the Government's hypocrisy when it talks about leading on climate change and building back better, while rubber stamping new roads regardless of their environmental and social impact.