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Erschienen in:
2024 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel
Environmental Liabilities and Insurance Law in the United Kingdom
verfasst von : Valerie Fogleman
Erschienen in: Managing Environmental Risks through Insurance
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
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Abstract
Individuals in the United Kingdom (UK) who suffer bodily injury and property damage from exposure to pollutants or other environmental damage have long been able to make claims against persons that caused the damage, with common law torts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland differing from civil law torts in Scotland.
Environmental legislation, especially from the early 1990s, substantially increased the liabilities with the introduction of more extensive environmental permitting and liability legislation. Most environmental legislation in this modern era originated in the European Union (EU). As a result, over 95% of environmental law in the UK is EU law or, as it has been called since the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020, ‘retained EU law’.
Since 1998, environmental law in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has increasingly diverged in each region as a result of devolution. The environmental is a devolved matter, which means that each government may enact its own environmental legislation. Whereas the extent of the differences was mitigated when the UK was a Member State of the EU, the differences have steadily increased since 31 January 2020.
The increase in environmental liabilities in the modern era of environmental law led insurers in the UK to include a pollution exclusion in public liability policies. At about the same time, some insurers—mostly affiliates of US insurers—began introducing environmental insurance policies for risks across the UK. Insurers subsequently also began offering extensions to public liability policies to provide cover for remediating off-site pollution from sudden and accidental incidents on an insured’s site.
This chapter will examine tort and statutory environmental liabilities in the UK and insurance that provides cover for them.