AC-2024-LON-002644 - [2025] EWHC 2761 (Admin)

Natural England has, through its lawyers, skilfully constructed and presented a Rule 27 application for costs caps variations, essentially as striking a fairer balance, as follows: that costs caps of £20,000 (Wild Justice) and £30,000 (Badger Trust) would produce a measured and proportionate overall cap of £50,000 on what Natural England could recover if it successfully defends this claim; that this is a modest adjustment where Wild Justice has a two-fold and Badger Trust a three-fold increase; that costs burdens for a public authority like Natural England are real and produce detrimental real-world deficits; that Wild Justice and Badger Trust have been able to make budgeted arrangements for £10,000 each towards Natural England’s costs, plus £37.5k (Wild Justice) and £21k (Badger Trust) as £58.5k for its own lawyers’ fees (and court fees of £1k); that this is a fair balance; that Wild Justice and Badger Trust chose to pitch for £52,486 crowdfunding and succeeded (£57,180), could as envisaged have gone for more, and still could go for more; that the £78.5k to which they have budgeted has been reduced by the crowdfunding (£57,180); that the rest is real-world affordable, given Wild Justice’s £57,576 cash in the bank (8.10.25), and Badger Trust’s reserves of £326,354 (31.12.24) even put alongside ringfencing for a projected 12 months’ expenditure (£310,000), under what is after all a chosen policy not a legally required one; that the claim is not a strong one; that the exercise of invited scrutiny of the financial information has been entirely appropriate; that this backward-looking claim, where Government policy is known to favour curtailed licensing of badger culls, the implications for the environment are very limited; that the witness statements about reluctantly withdrawing the claim should not be taken to be the real-world present position of Wild Justice and Badger Trust; and that, having regard to the prescribed statutory relevancies, these proposed increased caps (or some intermediate position) are not prohibitive expensiveness under Limb (a) or Limb (b).

Skilfully constructed and presented as it was, I have had no hesitation in rejecting the application. I have explained my reasons. I think Natural England’s focus was too much on suggested real-world affordability (Limb (a)), and not enough on the freestanding concept of objective unreasonableness, viewed against the mandatory relevancies and in the context of the overarching purpose of facilitating access to environmental justice with its public interest imperative, and all in the context of a viable and undiluted environmental protection judicial review claim.