On 2 April 2025, the Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the Secretary of State and Environment Agency’s appeal against a High Court judgment upholding a local angling club’s complaint of longstanding and wholesale breaches of legal duties to tackle water pollution.
The case concerned a formerly prime trout and grayling fishery near Pickering in North Yorkshire – the Upper Costa Beck – which had become degraded by pollution, including regular sewage spills from a nearby sewage treatment works.
The Court of Appeal held that the Secretary of State and Environment Agency had adopted an unlawful approach in failing to consider what specific action was required to meet legally binding environmental objectives set for each water body every six years, and by failing to put in place a meaningful programme of measures to achieve these objectives specific to each waterbody. That matters because the vast majority of our rivers and lakes are well below the expected environmental standards.
While the claim related to just the Upper Costa Beck, the same unlawful approach has been adopted across all of the 4,929 waterbodies in England, and thus has far-reaching implications for the UK’s approach to restoring its many degraded water bodies. Making clear that the Environment Agency needs to at least make clear what will be done for each water body to address polluting activities (such as sewage works and agriculture) should be a major step forward in cleaning up all of our rivers and lakes. The Court of Appeal refused the Government permission to appeal to the Supreme Court and the Government is yet to indicate whether it will lodge an application for permission to appeal directly with the Supreme Court.
David Wolfe KC and Raj Desai acted for Pickering Fishery Association, instructed by Andrew Kelton of Fish Legal.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment can be found here: Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs -v- Pickering Fishery Association – Courts and Tribunals Judiciary
For Fish Legal’s briefing see here: Court case loss will require Government to clean up rivers nationwide – Fish Legal
The Office for Environmental Protection’s briefing on the case is here: OEP welcomes decision in Pickering Fishery Association case on water quality laws | Office for Environmental Protection
Some news reports can be found here: Pickering fishermen win legal battle over Costa Beck river pollution – BBC News and Environment secretary’s appeal against Yorkshire river pollution ruling fails | Rivers | The Guardian