The River Severn is drowning in tonnes of chicken muck. The High Court just threw it a lifeline

You’ve probably heard about the River Wye – once one of Britain’s most beautiful rivers, now choking under the weight of intensive agricultural pollution. But while campaigners and cameras focused on the Wye’s decline, something just as grim has been happening next door.

The River Severn, the longest river in the UK, has been quietly suffering the consequences of a rapid and uncontrolled explosion of industrial-scale poultry farming along its banks. We’re talking tens of millions of birds, producing thousands of tonnes of chicken muck, much of it spread on nearby land with too little regard for the damage caused by excessive amounts of it. Loaded with nitrates and phosphates, it leaches into the river and can cause growth of toxic algae that suffocates and wipes out aquatic life.

But not anymore.

This week, the High Court ruled that Shropshire Council acted unlawfully when it approved a new 200,000-bird chicken farm, less than a mile from the Severn and dangerously close to protected wetland sites. The judge drew a line: no more megafarms without looking at the bigger picture.

The court found the council failed to consider the cumulative or total pollution impact of adding another intensive poultry farm in a region already full of them. This means that councils must look at all the other things that are happening in the area before giving their approval. The court also said that the council had failed to legally assess the environmental risks of spreading digestate, the slurry left behind after anaerobic digestion, on farmland. 

This is technical but really important. Agricultural waste has for too long been dealt with by shifting it on to others. Out of sight, out of mind. But, now, pretending the problem ends when the waste leaves the farm gate is no longer an option.

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This case was led by local expert and River Action board member Dr Alison Caffyn, someone who has spent years exposing the scale of the damage being caused to our rivers by industrial-scale farms, including by, quite literally, counting chickens.

In Shropshire, the scale is staggering. More than 20 million birds are kept at any one time in giant industrial sheds. These are not farms – they’re factories. And they’ve been allowed to reshape our countryside and our rivers, without properly thinking through the consequences.

There will likely be attempts to downplay or water down the meaning of this ruling. You may hear talk of bureaucracy and “red tape” or, possibly, that this changes nothing or should change nothing, because it’s too expensive or too difficult. But everyone knows that our rivers are in a terrible state. And, the truth is, this isn’t about paperwork – it’s about enforcing the law that is there to protect public health, local environments and the right of future generations to enjoy clean rivers and water.

Had this awareness and court ruling come a decade earlier, the River Wye’s ecological collapse might have been prevented. So far, lessons appear not to have been learned in the neighbouring River Severn. But the decision has halted this Shropshire factory farm and should help stop many others too. 

It gives hope that we can do better for the Severn and other iconic rivers that have been exploited in the pursuit of profit. River Action, the campaigning group behind this legal challenge, is working to ensure this and other recent decisions (a High Court ruling that declared farming manure is industrial waste and a local council saying no to the Methwold megafarm) are understood and used to improve the nation’s planning rules and systems. 

The tide is turning. Now, the government needs to drive industry-wide reform and meet its commitment to clean up our rivers, once and for all.

Emma Dearnaley is River Action’s head of legal.

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