Environmental campaign group Fighting Dirty has today announced it has launched legal proceedings against the UK Government, challenging new chemical safety regulations that it says put corporate interests ahead of public health and could harm generations to come.
The challenge targets the Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026, which came into force on 21 May 2026. The regulations change how hazardous substances are assessed and classified, creating a fast-track system that allows the Government to adopt chemical safety decisions made by other countries rather than conducting its own full assessment.
Between June and August 2025, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) consulted on proposed changes to the UK’s chemicals regime. In its consultation response, published on 12 February 2026, the HSE stated that only the European Union would be recognised as a “trusted jurisdiction” under the new fast-track system. The EU operates the world’s strongest chemical safety regime.
However, when the regulations were laid before Parliament on 24 February 2026, the EU was not named. Instead, the law relies on broad criteria: that a country has adopted the UN system for classifying chemicals “in a similar way” to the UK and operates a “transparent” classification process. The HSE alone decides whether a country meets those criteria, with no independent oversight, parliamentary approval or public consultation.
Fighting Dirty argues this leaves the door open for chemical safety decisions from countries with weaker standards than the UK and EU to be fast-tracked into UK law.
The regulations also allow the Government to diverge from EU safety decisions in “exceptional circumstances”. Government documents state these include situations where chemical safety decisions conflict with “the UK Government’s growth agenda, the Industrial Strategy, Critical Minerals Strategy or other priorities”.
This creates a loophole allowing Ministers to override safety protections for economic or political reasons. These criteria do not appear in the legislation itself, were not consulted on publicly and are not subject to independent oversight or parliamentary scrutiny.
Georgia Elliott-Smith, Founder and Director of Fighting Dirty, said:
“The Government promised the public that it would maintain the highest standards of chemical safety. That promise has not been kept. The law that was enacted gives the HSE unchecked power to accept chemical safety decisions from countries with lower standards than our own, while also creating a loophole that allows Ministers to override protections whenever they conflict with the growth agenda. This is deregulation dressed up as efficiency, and the British public will pay for it with their health.”
Chemical classification underpins the UK’s entire chemical safety system. It determines which substances are identified as hazardous, what warnings appear on labels, what restrictions apply and whether chemicals are banned or tightly controlled. If the classification process is weakened, every protection built on top of it is weakened too.
The risks are already evident. PFAS “forever chemicals” are found in non-stick cookware, waterproof clothing, food packaging and cosmetics. They do not break down in the environment and have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, infertility and immune disorders. The UK has not voluntarily banned a single PFAS chemical since leaving the EU.
Other substances classified as proven human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, including formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, hexavalent chromium and acrylonitrile, remain far more widely used in countries such as the United States, China, India and Brazil than in the UK and EU. Fighting Dirty argues that the new regulations risk importing weaker standards for chemicals such as these into UK law.
Under UK REACH, the UK has not added a single substance to its Substances of Very High Concern List during the same period in which the EU added 44.
Georgia Elliott-Smith added:
“We are not asking for anything radical. We are asking the court to hold the Government to its own promises and ensure that laws designed to protect people from cancer-causing chemicals actually do their job. If this law goes unchallenged, it could shape how chemicals are regulated in the UK for generations to come.”
The legal challenge
Fighting Dirty is represented by Ricardo Gama, Julia Eriksen and Carol Day of Leigh Day Solicitors.
A formal Letter Before Claim was sent to the HSE and the Secretary of State on 17 April 2026. The HSE responded on 8 May 2026 but failed to provide a satisfactory resolution. Fighting Dirty is now proceeding with an application for judicial review.
Ricardo Gama, Partner at Leigh Day, said:
“These rule changes will allow chemicals to be introduced to the UK market where they have been approved in another ‘trusted jurisdiction’. The government promised that the only ‘trusted jurisdiction’ would be the EU, but their rule changes do not have any safeguards to that effect. This means that this government, or any future government, could approve chemicals from places that have lower standards than the UK and EU, which our client fears could lead to chemicals approvals becoming a geopolitical bargaining chip.”
Fighting Dirty’s legal cases are all crowd funded. The link to this case is: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/fighting-chemical-deregulation/
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Fighting Dirty is a not-for-profit campaign group founded by Georgia Elliott-Smith, George Monbiot, and Steve Hyndside. It is committed to using the law to close loopholes, tighten policies, and ensure that people, not corporations, are protected. www.fightingdirty.org
Background on Fighting Dirty: Fighting Dirty has a proven record of using the law to force regulatory change. In 2024, the group won a landmark judicial review against the Environment Agency over its decision to abandon a commitment to bring the testing and regulation of sewage sludge spread on UK farmland into a proper regulatory regime. Sewage sludge from water treatment plants, contaminated with microplastics, PFAS, and other dangerous chemicals, is spread on agricultural land every year as fertiliser. The High Court found the EA’s decision to remove its target date for action was irrational and Mr Justice Fordham recognised a higher standard of judicial scrutiny for environmental cases, setting an important legal precedent.
CHEM Trust is a charity working to protect humans and wildlife from harmful chemicals. You are welcome to use this additional quote in your reporting even though CHEM Trust are not directly involved in this specific legal case:
Chloe Topping, Senior UK Campaigner, CHEM Trust, said:
“It is really concerning that these changes have been made to a core part of our chemicals regulatory system, leaving the door open to adopting proposals from countries that might have lower standards than ours. The government needs to close this door by clarifying in the legal text that they only intend to use the changes to speed up adoption of decisions made by the EU, which sets the highest standards globally on chemical safety.”
The Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/484) came into force on 21 May 2026. They amend the GB CLP Regulation (retained from EU Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008), which is the primary legislation governing the classification and labelling of chemicals in Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales).
The “fast-track” system creates a streamlined pathway for the HSE to adopt chemical hazard classifications from foreign jurisdictions that, in the HSE’s opinion, have adopted the UN Globally Harmonised System (GHS) “in a similar way” to the UK and have a “transparent classification proposal system based on public consultation.” The HSE states that currently only the EU meets these criteria, but this limitation is not written into the legislation.
The HSE’s consultation on chemicals legislative reform ran from 23 June to 18 August 2025. The consultation response was published on 12 February 2026.
The “exceptional circumstances” criteria, under which the Government may diverge from EU safety standards, were disclosed in the 55th Report of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and include situations where EU decisions conflict with “the UK Government’s growth agenda, the Industrial Strategy, Critical Minerals Strategy or other priorities.”
The UK has not banned a single PFAS “forever chemical” since leaving the EU. Under UK REACH, the UK has not added a single substance to the Substances of Very High Concern List in the time it took the EU to add 44 substances.