High Court quashes planning permission for intensive poultry farm over environmental impact assessment approach

The judicial review, brought by rural policy expert Dr Alison Caffyn, challenged the council's decision to provide planning permission in May 2024 for a set of intensive poultry units (IPUs) that could hold up to 200,000 birds. 

Dr Caffyn brought a challenge due to fears about the impacts of poultry farming on river catchments, where the nitrogen and phosphate from the poultry manure could end up.

At the High Court, Mr Justice Fordham was asked by the parties to decide the following issues:

1. Whether the council was required to carry out an adequate assessment of the effect of the spreading of manure (whether in (i) raw or (ii) digestate form) on third party land, and did in fact carry out such an assessment.
2. Whether the council acted unlawfully by imposing a condition which failed to prevent the spreading of manure on land and thus failed to address concerns about the environmental effects of the development.
3. Whether the council failed to carry out a lawful appropriate assessment before granting the permission (i) by determining the significance of some of the development's impacts by reference to thresholds, (ii) by failing to carry out a lawful in-combination assessment of those impacts, and/or (iii) by assuming incorrectly that the development's air scrubbers would be continually operational.

Summarising his decision, Mr Justice Fordham said he had found in favour of the council and the Interested Party, as follows.

"(1)(i) The Council carried out a legally adequate assessment of the effect of the spreading of raw manure on third party land. (2) The Council lawfully imposed a condition to prevent the spreading of raw manure on land, reasonably suitable to address its gap-closing objective. (3) The Council did not fail to carry out a lawful appropriate assessment before granting the permission although (i) it determined the significance of some of the development's impacts by reference to thresholds, (ii) it carried out an in-combination assessment of those impacts by using APIS [Air Pollution Information System] background levels, and (iii) relevant modelling assumed that the development's air scrubbers would be continually operational. The claim fails on those points."

However, he also found in favour of the claimant, as follows.

"(1)(ii) Having failed to address the legal criteria of causation and capability of reasonable assessment, the Council failed to carry out a legally adequate assessment of the effect of the spreading of digestate on third party land. (3)(ii) The Council failed to carry out a lawful appropriate assessment before granting the permission, failing to carry out a lawful in-combination assessment of the development's impacts, because of a material error of law in excluding Post-APIS Projects subject to EP [Environmental Permitting] but not planning decisions. The claim succeeds on those points. I propose to quash the grant of planning permission."

He went on to grant the claimant's judicial review claim, quash the planning permission and order that the council pay the claimant's costs of £35,000.

Adam Carey