Rights and Justice centre

Friends of the Earth's Rights & Justice Centre works to defend and extend people's rights in environmental decision-making.

We help communities in the UK bring about environmental justice where they live.

If you're concerned about:

• Developments that affect your local environment
• Proper consultation on decisions that affect your community
• Your right to a clean and healthy environment

then we can give you professional legal advice over the phone.

The Centre takes on a few public interest legal cases every year, so your community group's case could get taken on directly. Alternatively we will put you in touch with another organisation that will be able to help.

The Advice Line is staffed by legal volunteers supervised by Friends of the Earth's legal team, and is open from:

You can contact us by calling Freephone 0808 801 0405 at these times, or via the Friends of the Earth Contact Form, remembering to select "Legal and planning rights" from the drop-down list of subject lines.

Past cases taken on by the Rights & Justice Centre

Our successes include acting for:

• The Tree & Wildlife Action Group defending the Great North Community Forest from development. We brought judicial review proceedings to prevent the development going ahead without a proper environmental impact assessment;
• The No Third Runway Action Group and others to defend themselves against an injunction brought by BAA to prevent participation at the 2007 Climate Camp at Heathrow;
• Members of the public and campaign groups in appeals to the Information Tribunal to uphold rights of access to environmental information;
• Allotment holders in London's East End who were trying to ensure that they would not be evicted from their allotments without being provided with suitable replacements.

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