Alison Caffyn, R (on the application of) v Shropshire Council

Environmental effects arising from the disposal of poultry manure may constitute indirect effects of an intensive livestock development and must be assessed where they are likely and capable of meaningful assessment. Processing raw manure into digestate does not, without evaluative reasoning, break the chain of causation.

An appropriate assessment may use scientifically supported thresholds as evaluative screening tools. However, an authority must assess real-world in-combination effects, including relevant post-baseline projects regulated by another consent regime. Parallel pollution controls cannot justify narrowing a statutory assessment. A planning condition requiring manure to be taken to an anaerobic digester or other suitable facility may lawfully prevent raw manure being spread on land.

The claimant sought judicial review of Shropshire Council’s decision to grant planning permission for four intensive poultry units accommodating 200,000 birds at North Farm. The development would produce approximately 3,600 tonnes of poultry manure annually.

The challenge concerned the assessment of manure disposal, the legality of a condition requiring manure to be exported for treatment, and the Habitats Regulations assessment of ammonia effects on Fenemere and Hencott Pool Ramsar sites. The central questions included whether digestate-spreading effects required assessment, whether post-baseline projects requiring environmental permits had been included in the in-combination assessment, and whether reliance on thresholds and continuously operational air scrubbers was lawful.

1. Disposition. The judicial review claim succeeded in part. The planning permission granted on 16 May 2024 was quashed and the matter was remitted to the Council. The Council was ordered to pay £35,000 costs.
2. Raw manure. The Council had lawfully assessed the effects of spreading raw manure on third-party land. The environmental material addressed water pollution, receptors, relevant controls and the use of a planning condition. The assessment was adequate even though the precise third-party land was not identified.
3. Digestate. The Council had not made any identifiable evaluative judgment about the indirect effects of spreading digestate. The criteria of causation and capability of meaningful assessment were therefore left unaddressed. Processing manure into digestate did not itself break the causal chain. The absence of reasoning was a material gap in the EIA and required quashing.
4. Planning condition 19. On its natural and ordinary meaning, read in context and with common sense, the condition required raw manure to be taken to an anaerobic digester or other suitable facility for treatment. It was reasonably suitable to prevent raw manure being spread on land and was not unlawfully vague or unenforceable.
5. Habitats assessment. The use of a 1% threshold applied to a combined process contribution was not shown to be unlawful. Nor was it unlawful to use APIS background levels, or to rely on modelling which assumed effective operation of air scrubbers where conditions addressed breakdown and minimised downtime.
6. In-combination assessment. The Council unlawfully excluded relevant post-APIS projects merely because they required a new or varied environmental permit rather than a new planning permission. The statutory reference to other plans or projects required real-world cumulative effects to be considered. That error was material.

First-instance judicial review in the High Court (Planning Court). The decision of Shropshire Council’s Northern Planning Committee was quashed.