Michael Donnelly

Plans have been approved for a 53,000 square metres ‘hyperscale’ data centre on a 6.8-hectare site in west London that had previously been earmarked for a 2,000-home development and a film studio.

A pledge by the Prime Minister to give local areas “stronger planning and regeneration powers” will be met via the delivery of provisions in the English Devolution Act, officials say.

The waste industry has welcomed the appointment of Emma Hardy as the new minister for the circular economy and waste crime brief, but DEFRA is yet to confirm that the former water minister has taken on the brief.

Campaigners have called on DEFRA to investigate large-scale water deliveries to private estates following reports that a US billionaire is trucking tens of thousands of litres of water a day to his country estate in Wiltshire – an area currently in drought.

The government should examine the relationship between regulators and the pharmaceutical industry to remove the risk of “regulatory capture” in relation to pet parasite medications (PPMs), and it should ban the over-the-counter sale of PPMs ahead of further research into their environmental impacts, peers have recommended.

More than 5,000 people have joined what lawyers say is the largest legal action concerning environmental pollution ever brought in the UK, it has been announced.

Just 14% of surface water bodies across England are in ‘good’ ecological health, down from 16% in 2019, according to a new Environment Agency (EA) data release, but the regulator has argued this does not necessarily equate to a decline in water quality.

The High Court has quashed an inspector’s decision to uphold a council’s refusal of an employment scheme on a greenfield site, with a judge finding that the inspector “erred in law” in his interpretation of policies in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that are intended to manage the transport impacts from development.

As back-to-back heatwaves roast the UK and the government rejects calls for a dedicated plan, Michael Donnelly talks to a former EA chair and others about a green way out of this crisis – and the role that energy-hungry AC tech should (or shouldn’t) be allowed to play.

Campaigners have lodged a judicial review claim at the High Court against a council’s planning consent for what they say constitutes an expansion to a factory farm, with the group arguing there was a “failure” to carry out an environmental impact assessment (EIA).