ABSTRACT
In Chapter 11, we noted that legal persons, such as individuals and companies, are able to use the law of torts to obtain redress for damage to property and person caused by the polluting activities of other persons. The role of private individuals, companies and other organisations or groups is not, however, confined to litigation in the civil courts. Legal persons also have an important role to play in ensuring that the Command and Control regimes we encountered in Chapters 4-10 are properly regulated and the relevant regulators are made accountable for their decisions. Private persons have two courses of action open to them if they are unhappy with any regulatory action (or inaction) or decision. First, in the event that a regulator exercises its discretion not to prosecute a person who has breached environmental law, any person who disagrees with this decision may exercise the right (provided the right is not excluded by the relevant statute) to mount a private prosecution to bring the alleged offender to account before the criminal courts. Secondly, any person may challenge a wide range of regulatory decisions by means of an application to the courts to have the relevant decision judicially reviewed. These two mechanisms enable the private person to ‘police’ the activities of public regulators. In order for private persons effectively to police the decisions of the regulators, it is essential that such persons have access to regulatory records, especially those relating to breaches of environmental law and pollution licences (that is, applications for licences, the conditions attached to licences, the monitoring of polluting emissions to confirm that licences are complied with, etc). The importance of the participation of private citizens in the protection of the environment is widely recognised, especially by the European Community (EC) and the international community. The EC in particular has played an important part in ensuring that Member States make environmental information available to the public. More recently, the Human Rights Act 1998 has provided the basis for a number of interesting environmental claims.
