Report from upper tribunal on application for child health data linked to air pollution

The judgement is HERE

I  went to the upper tribunal yesterday to argue that NHS child death and hospital admissions statistics linked to air pollution including full postcodes should be released to an academic. My previous argument at the original application with Barking Havering, Redbridge & University Hospitals Trust (BHRUT) was that the full postcodes should be given to me was not gaining any traction due to confidentiality issues.

I expect the data, if ever published, will show a link between high pollution days and hospital admissions per the research below which I cut and paste at the end of this post. There is also research linking living close to roads and an increased risk of hospital admission due to air pollution. This is accepted by Redbridge Council as they have insisted on air pollution filters for the Tesco Toxic Towers and the Homebase Horror High Rise in Goodmayes. 

Both the Tesco and Homebase developments are sited between a busy polluting High Road and the noise polluting Elizabeth Line. Both developments have substantial affordable housing allocations. This means some of the most vulnerable families in the borough will be living there.

A school is planned at the Tesco site, right beside the High Road. This is the subject of an ongoing judicial review application for which the Court of Appeal will be ruling upon soon.

Research suggests poorer children due to poor diet are more prone to diseases caused by air pollution. So, the most disadvantaged in our community are likely to be put at risk at these proposed developments. 

The FT article below has an analysis of child deaths using national office of statistics. The author claims the poorest eight-year-olds are ten times more likely than the wealthiest children. My expectation is that the data held by BHRUT will support the claims made in the FT. 

The judge ruled against me yesterday, unfortunately I made a large procedural error. I should have used a different set of regulations, the “Environmental Information Regulations” more on these at

ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi-eir-and-access-to-information/guide-to-the-environmental-information-regulations/what-are-the-eir/#:~:text=The%20Regulations%20give%20people%20a,not%20to%20have%20the%20information.

The judge informed me that I could not rely on the Aarhus convention withing citing these Environmental Information Regulations at the lower tribunal.

I did argue that the over arching objective of the courts is to deliver justice and so an exception be made, but this argument failed. In the alternative I did argue the full postcodes be made available to me, but I do not expect that to succeed either. 

If possible, I am minded to seek permission at the court of appeal. However, this appears very difficult due to the procedural error made by me. To my knowledge, no research has been carried into whether living between railway lines and polluting roads is especially injurious to child health in London. This motivates me to continue to seek this information and I will canvas for support for a new, correctly argued, information request to Great Ormond Street, with the hope of getting local organisations on board. I do not propose to write to Great Ormond Street until this application has exhausted all appeals available.Quote from academic paper on air pollution below.

Deaths from air pollution in the UK are higher by a factor of 10 than from car crashes, 7 for drug-related deaths and 52 for murders, and yet awareness seems to be lacking in local government. We conducted an 18-year retrospective cohort study using routinely collected health care records from Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, and Perth Royal Infirmary, in Tayside, Scotland, UK, from 2000 to 2017. Hospitalisation events and deaths were linked to daily nitric oxides (NOX, NO, NO2), and particulate matter 10 (PM10) levels extracted from publicly available data over this same time period. Distributed lag models were used to estimate risk ratios for hospitalisation and mortality, adjusting for temperature, humidity, day of the week, month and public holiday. Nitric oxides and PM10 were associated with an increased risk of all hospital admissions and cardiovascular (CV) admissions on day of exposure to pollutant. This study shows a significant increase in all cause and CV hospital admissions, on high pollution days in Tayside, Scotland 

Documents relied upon.

1) Aarthus convention

2) The Goldacre review

3) Court of Appeal Case No: C1/2019/2670

4) :Police reply to the above court case https://www.south-wales.police.uk/news/south-wales/news/2020/response-to-the-court-of-appeal-judgment-on-the-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/

5) FT article: Is Healthy Retirement only for the rich dated 23.6.23

6) Big pharma article in Mail on line dated 25th April

7) Parents raise awareness of air pollution 14th July 2023

8) Associations between ambient air pollutants and hospital admissions: more needs to be done

Jill Jf Belch 1, Catherine Fitton 2, Bianca Cox 3, James D Chalmers 4

Affiliations expand

PMID: 34590228 PMCID: PMC8580915 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-16544-

9) Ella Kissi-Debrah – inquest report