Our impact

We take on the cases and campaigns where we’ll have the biggest impact, even when the odds are stacked against us.

We get a positive outcome in more than two thirds of our cases – either a straightforward or a partial legal win. But whether we win or lose in court, we always fight to make positive change.

Sometimes the legal win is clear. We intervened in a case against the water company that was polluting the Manchester Ship Canal and won in the Supreme Court. And we successfully defended the rights of clinicians to make decisions about the medical care of young trans people in the Court of Appeal.

And sometimes the victory takes a little longer. The High Court knocked back our challenge to a gas drilling scheme in Surrey, even though the government hadn’t taken the scheme’s carbon emissions into account. But we kept on campaigning about the climate crisis. The following year we won in the High Court, forcing the government to rewrite its failing plan to hit net zero. And the legal climate we helped to create saw the Supreme Court rule in favour of the campaigner Sarah Finch, declaring it was obvious that fossil-fuel projects should be judged on their carbon emissions.

There are many ways to win. We won’t stop fighting for a fairer, greener future.

Annual report 2023-2024