Council facing legal challenge over grant of planning permission for poultry unit near River Severn

Local environmental activists are taking legal action against Shropshire Council over the spread of intensive poultry industry in the River Severn catchment.

Law firm Leigh Day is taking the case for Alison Caffyn on behalf of campaign group River Action, of which she is a board member.

River Action opposes what it called industrial scale chicken farming whose intensive agricultural practices are blamed for pollution.

The group said the River Wye catchment had “been devastated by the failure to enforce anti-pollution regulations” and it wanted to prevent similar damage to the Severn.

Leigh Day said Shropshire gave planning permission to LJ Cooke & Son for a poultry production unit at Montford Bridge that will include four buildings, each more than 100m long, and a biomass store with boilers.

It said this would house 230,000 birds, and would be only 400 metres from a poultry site believed to house nearly 500,000 birds.   

Permission was initially refused after Natural England advised that three nearby protected sites could affected by aerial pollutants and Shropshire officers said the plan did not detail how to deal with chicken manure.  

It was though approved after the applicant proposed exporting manure to an anaerobic digestion unit after which the resulting digestate would be spread on farmland.  

River Action still raised objections including that processing of manure at an anaerobic digestion unit would not cut nitrate and phosphate groundwater pollution as the digestate would still be spread on farmland. 

Caffyn has applied for judicial review on the grounds that there were failures to: assess the effects of spreading manure and the emissions from burning biomass; impose a lawful planning condition on manure processing that would prevent groundwater pollution; carry out a lawful appropriate assessment on the integrity of a designated protected site.

She also argued that there had been a breach of regulation 9(3) of the Habitats Regulations, which requires Shropshire to avoid the deterioration of habitats at protected sites 

Caffyn said: “Enough is enough. We simply cannot allow the creation of more of these giant clusters of polluting poultry units. There are already well over 20 million chickens in Shropshire, we don’t need more.

"Before we know it, the River Severn will soon be suffering the same pollution load as the neighbouring Wye – all because of these misguided and ill-informed planning decisions by Shropshire Council.”

Leigh Day  environment team solicitor  Ricardo Gama said: “Our client hopes that her claim for judicial review will set a precedent for local authorities across the country determining planning applications for similar developments which will cumulatively have severe impacts on protected sites. She believes that there needs to be a complete rethink of this approach.” 

Shropshire Council has been contacted for comment.

Mark Smulian