Support our legal challenge, endorsed by the Campaign for Freedom of Information, to force ministers to publish vital environmental reports
The government is breaking the law by concealing vital information which would help solve our biggest environmental problems, including the climate crisis, wildlife destruction and river pollution.
We have uncovered evidence that ministers are ignoring their duty under the Environmental Information Regulations to publish environmental reports proactively. We need your help to achieve much greater transparency.
Publish, don’t stifle, the truth…
Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said: “This important legal challenge would increase pressure for government and public bodies to publish, not stifle, inconvenient environmental reports.
“It would make it harder for them to conceal material which suggests that policies are not working, adding to the pressure for significant findings to be published and acted on.”
Uncovering the evidence…
With the help of environment and information law barrister Pete Lockley, I have uncovered how the government is routinely failing to comply with a requirement in the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) to “progressively make [environmental] information available to the public”.
Hiding ecosystem collapse assessment...
The government commissions reports on the toughest questions we face but often keeps them secret. They may only emerge years later if, and when, it is politically convenient for ministers to act on their findings.
The government recently tried to hide a national security assessment on ecosystem collapse, apparently because it would draw attention to the government’s failure to act.
That report was belatedly published last month following a freedom of information request.
At least in that case the title of the report was known so a request could be made for it.
You don’t know what you don’t know…
It’s trickier to get hold of reports whose very existence is kept secret.
That was my experience while working for openDemocracy trying to find out what the government knew about hydrogen for home heating, which experts say is a false solution promoted by the gas industry to allow it to keep selling gas.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero eventually admitted it held four reports on hydrogen heating but it took two years of fighting, via the Information Commissioner’s Office and a tribunal, before three were released. DESNZ is appealing to the Upper Tribunal to try to keep the fourth secret.
The belatedly released reports show that heating homes with hydrogen would be much more expensive and cause much higher emissions than switching to heat pumps.
If those reports had been published when produced in 2022, ministers would immediately have come under greater pressure to rule out hydrogen for home heating and move more quickly towards electrification. Keeping the reports secret allowed ministers to sit on their hands and avoid difficult, unpopular decisions. Meanwhile, the gas industry has exploited government inaction by selling millions of new gas boilers, locking homes into burning gas for decades.
Toxic “forever chemicals”…
Other departments and agencies also keep secret important reports paid for by the public.
A report by Jacobs for the Environment Agency revealed that “forever chemicals”, known as PFAS, are contaminating up to 10,000 sites in England and cleaning them up could cost as much as £121 billion. The government had no effective plan for dealing with this problem so it sat on the report for 14 months. It was only published after an FOI request by ENDS report. In February 2026, more than two and half years after receiving the PFAS report, the government finally published a “PFAS plan”.
Under the EIRs, the PFAS report should have been published in 2023 without waiting for a request.
Duty ignored…
We sent Defra and DESNZ a series of requests to find out whether they were doing anything to comply with their proactive publication duty. The EIRs required them to publish “at least…facts and analyses of facts which the public authority considers relevant and important in framing major environmental policy proposals”.
Neither department could produce any evidence that any official had even discussed the duty in the past two years. Neither had any policy on how it should comply with the duty.
Government lawyers responded to a pre-action letter admitting that more “awareness” of the duty was needed across government. However, they adopted a very narrow interpretation of that duty in order to claim the government was compliant.
We think their interpretation is wrong and intend to seek a judicial review to force the government to adopt an active publication policy on vital environmental issues. Armed with that information, the public could then put more pressure on ministers to act.
Next steps…
We need to raise a minimum of £5,000 initially in order to file a claim for judicial review. We therefore seek your help. Please share this page and donate whatever you can to our fighting fund.
