Save the River Severn

Together with Sustain, River Action has written to 19 Local Planning Authorities identified as key areas for the potential expansion of industrial chicken farms. In our letter, we highlighted recent landmark legal rulings—including those secured by River Action in Shropshire and Herefordshire—that significantly change how planning applications for factory farms must be assessed.

We urged councils to update their Local Plans to reflect this new legal landscape, ensuring stronger protections for rivers, nature, and rural communities. We also warned that approving non-compliant applications could expose councils to costly legal challenges.

In June 2025, after years of campaigning and legal action, DEFRA strengthened the Farming Rules for Water. However, the new rules left loopholes that allowed manure to be spread when crops didn’t need it, which often leads to unnecessary pollution in rivers like the Severn. The update rules fell short on:

1) Autumn manure spreading: It didn’t go far enough to clarify the rules around autumn manure spreading – a practice often linked to river pollution.

2) A lack of clarity around enforcement thresholds: I.e., how are the rules actually going to be enforced.

A month later, following River Action’s letter to DEFRA seeking urgent clarification on the loophole, the government confirmed that manure must only be applied when it meets crop or soil needs at the time of application. This long-overdue change marks a major step towards reducing agricultural pollution, protecting our waterways, and holding regulators and polluters to account.

River Action secured a major victory in the High Court, overturning Shropshire Council’s approval for a new megafarm. The ruling marks a pivotal moment in the battle against factory farming and sets a national precedent that planning authorities must assess the cumulative environmental impacts of industrial farming before granting approval.

In March 2025, the River Action-backed ruling established that farming manure is legally classed as ‘waste’ in a landmark ruling. This precedent directly strengthens the campaign to protect the River Severn catchment: planning authorities and farms can no longer assume manure is a benign by-product, but must now treat it as a regulated waste stream, with transparent disposal and safeguards.

In November 2024, we launched a legal action against Shropshire Council after it approved a 230,000-bird poultry unit in the Severn catchment. River Action board member Dr Alison Caffyn challenged the council’s failure to properly assess the environmental impacts of manure spreading and biomass emissions, and to ensure protection for sensitive habitats.