Yusra Suedi and Clare Cummings report on the SCI event, focusing on empowering local campaigners and improving understanding of environmental legal strategies.

Greater Manchester has a thriving and creative environmental movement, but campaigners are facing increasing challenges. The political space for protest and for public participation in planning decisions continues to shrink. In 2022, the non-profit organisation CIVICUS downgraded the UK’s civic space to ‘obstructed’ due to new laws, such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Public Order Act 2023 that increase the criminalisation of activists. Meanwhile, in January 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves described environmental protections as a barrier to economic growth and the need to ‘stop blockers getting in the way of development’. As environmental crises worsen, exploring legal strategies is becoming a new avenue for action. 

To support local campaigners’ understanding of environmental legal strategies, Yusra Suedi and Clare Cummings from the University of Manchester’s Climate and Justice Group convened an evening of networking and knowledge sharing on 5 February 2026 “Building a Greater Manchester Legal Network for Environmental Campaigning”. Kindly funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute, the workshop brought together local campaigners, legal practitioners and researchers to explore the challenges and opportunities in using legal strategies to address environmental injustices.

Starting the evening, Tom Brenan, co-director of The Environmental Law Foundation explained how the Foundation supports community environmental campaigners by connecting them to pro-bono legal advice and policy research. Tom gave examples of the Sussex Wildlife Trust had worked with a lawyer to challenge dredging in a marine conservation zone, and how a local community in Lewes created a charter recognising the rights of the river Ouse, which has now been endorsed by the Lewes District Council. 

The following discussion revealed key challenges facing local campaign groups. Participants described how it is difficult to know if there are ways of legally challenging government decisions and that local councils sometimes obscure the planning review process. Others mentioned their concerns over how the proposed amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will reduce environmental protections, limit their ability to challenge planning proposals and undermine local councils’ power to reject planning applications.

Success stories were also shared. Several participants described how they had worked together to document Greater Manchester’s existing brownfield land (land that has been previously developed) to demonstrate that greenfield land did not need to be used to achieve the housebuilding targets. Others mentioned the potential of Rights of Nature and the Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations Act to give legal protection to ecosystems and non-human species. Noting wider examples of effective community legal campaigns, such as The Hillsborough Law (Public Office (Accountability) Bill), the role of persistent campaign efforts alongside legal strategies seems important.

The lawyers present also emphasised that environmental legal challenges need a mix of expertise, both legal (often public law) and from local communities, as well as scientific evidence and environmental data. To start thinking about environmental legal strategies, they pointed to resources available from the environmental campaign NGO Friends of the Earth and advice charity, Planning Aid England, and to the platform Crowd Justice for crowdfunding legal action. 

While the discussion flowed and we time quickly ran out, it was agreed that campaigners needed a way to more easily access legal expertise. As this project develops, the Climate and Justice Group will continue to facilitate connections between local campaigners and legal practitioners and so aim to support effective environmental legal activism in Greater Manchester. 

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