Ministers to appeal against river pollution ruling won by Yorkshire anglers
High court had ruled government was not meeting legal duty to clean up Costa Beck near Pickering Sandra Laville Tue 14 Jan 2025 06.00 GMT
The UK environment secretary, Steve Reed, is pursuing legal action against a group of anglers who are trying to restore the ecosystem of a river.
Lawyers for Reed will argue on Tuesday in the court of appeal that cleaning up individual rivers and streams devastated by pollution is administratively unworkable.
The appeal was begun by the previous Conservative administration, after Pickering Fishery Association, a fishing club in North Yorkshire, won a landmark legal case against the government and the Environment Agency.
The government will argue that it is administratively unworkable to come up with specific measures to clean up individual rivers, lakes and streams as is required by law under the Water Framework Directive.
Under the water framework directive, the EU-derived regulations designed to drive a clean-up of rivers, which is part of British law, all waterbodies should achieve good ecological status or potential for good ecological status by 2027.
What the absolute fuck.
