BBC File on 4The scale of efforts by oil companies and public bodies to protect their premises from environmental protesters can be revealed in new BBC analysis.
Oil companies and public bodies say the orders are needed to prevent disruptive and dangerous protests. But a lawyer acting for protesters says they are unfair and amount to a “privatised system of justice”. However, lawyers acting for the protesters argue that civil injunction proceedings lack some of the safeguards of the criminal system.
Sarah Benn, a retired GP from Birmingham, was imprisoned for 32 days in 2022 for repeatedly breaching an injunction preventing protests near Kingsbury Oil Terminal in Warwickshire, the largest inland oil storage depot in the UK. However, court documents filed by the council’s lawyers claim the actions of the protesters, which included entering the site and climbing oil storage tanks, could have led to an explosion affecting the entire area.