Fish Legal has won
a major victory in our groundbreaking case against Yorkshire Water
Services Ltd and United Utilities Plc, which was the culmination of the
six year legal campaign for greater transparency within the water and
sewerage industry which we have reported to members before.
The
Upper Tribunal ruled last Friday that water companies in England &
Wales are ‘public authorities’ for the purposes of the Environmental
Information Regulations (2004) and so are now under a legal duty to
disclose environmental information they hold to the public.
The
implications of this test case, which has been fought over the past 6
years, will be felt industry-wide. It could also affect companies
operating in other privatised industries which have a similar role
managing resources and services of public interest, such as the oil, gas,
electricity providers and the Royal Mail.
Fish
Legal often wants to know about sewage pollution and over-abstraction
that damages rivers and coastal waters to help us fight legal cases on
behalf of our member clubs and fishery owners. This judgment means we now
have a right to get this information directly from the water companies
themselves. In the past, several companies refused to provide any
information when asked, whilst others expressly refused to disclose
information in line with this law. The Judges in this case ruled they
were wrong to do so. Any concerned individual or organisation now
has a right to the environmental information held by the water and
sewerage companies.
The
water and sewerage industry causes significant damage to the environment
every year. This is partly due to the very nature of what it does in
treating sewage and abstracting water, but in many cases is due to
mismanagement and underreporting of incidents. The industry will now have
to open up what it does to much greater public scrutiny.
We
are delighted with this result, which has at long last asserted the
rights of our angling members, and the wider public, to get information
from these companies when they cause pollution or other damage. Being
able to obtain environmental information directly about activities that
affect the environment will make it much easier to deal with complex
issues affecting fisheries. We sincerely hope that with the industry’s
greater accountability will come higher environmental performance.
This
is a huge victory for the environment and for fish and fishing. Our legal
team at Fish Legal has done a brilliant job fighting this case over the
past 6 years, taking on some of the largest companies in the country and
winning. This has only been possible because of the support of members of
the Angling Trust & Fish Legal, whose subscriptions enable us to
fight these battles for the benefit of all anglers and the water
environment. Once again, we have demonstrated that when anglers unite, we
can be a very powerful force for good.
Please
click here to forward this
message to every angler you know and encourage them to
join us so that we can do more work like this for the benefit of all fish
and fishing. There are lots of challenges we could take on if we
had more funds.
If you are not a
member yourself, please join
the Angling Trust
& Fish Legal HERE or by calling
01568 620447
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