UK farming does not have a great track record when it comes to getting large-scale – or ‘mega’, as they are often known – farm planning applications through the system.
In December 2009, an application went in for an 8,000-cow dairy unit near Nocton, Lincolnshire. It was withdrawn in April 2010 and a revised smaller application suffered the same fate in February 2011, following a massive backlash from NGOs, celebrities, MPs and local residents that generated a wave of media headlines – although Nocton Dairies actually cited an objection by the Environment Agency (EA) as the reason for the withdrawal.
At around the same time, Midland Pig Producers submitted an application for a pig unit capable of housing 24,500 pigs, including 2,500 sows, and an anaerobic digestion plant in Foston, Derbyshire. While the backlash wasn’t quite as severe as for Nocton, it was considerable and sustained, and after a mammoth planning battle, including finally gaining an EA permit in 2016, the unit was never built.
Cranswick, the UK’s biggest pig producer and processor and an increasingly significant poultry player, is beginning to know how they feel, although it is still very much in the midst of its planning battle.
Back in April 2022, Cranswick submitted an application for a large, combined pig and poultry farm in Norfolk, to house 14,000 pigs and more than 700,000 chickens.
Three years on, the hearing is finally due to be heard by Kings Lynn and West Norfolk borough council on April 3, although this is far from certain.
The timing has not been helped by an administrative error by the council, which discovered towards the end of last year that it had failed to upload some documents during the initial consultation. As a result, the whole consultation had to be rerun from December 18, further delaying an already protracted process.
In echoes of Nocton and Foston, the application has received more than 15,000 objections. And yet Cranswick remains adamant it has done everything asked of it when it comes to the matters of substance associated with the application – and is highlighting the proposal’s vital food security context.
Cranswick’s proposal is not by any means a typical farm application, given its scale and the level of interest it has generated, which was always going to make it a tougher challenge.
But the process has highlighted some of the wider issues the industry would like to be addressed as Defra secretary Steve Reed promises planning reforms he insists will remove some of the shackles holding the industry back.
The proposal
The outline plan is to redevelop an existing pig unit on a site currently made up of three farms located near the villages of Methwold and Feltwell.
On the pig side, existing old buildings would be demolished and replaced by 14 purpose-built straw-based barns, each of around 13,000sq m and housing 1,000 finishing pigs, so about 14,000 pigs in total. This would equate to around 49,000 pigs on the site annually, about 0.5% of the pigs produced annually in the UK.
The site currently houses about 7,500 pigs, but it has a permit from the EA to house more than 29,000 head, so the development represents a big reduction in total pig numbers that could be reared, Cranswick pointed out.
Its proposal is designed to develop the ‘most sustainable farm possible’. The pigs would be supplied from Cranswick’s Wayland Farms’ operators or third-party breeding farms at 35kg and reared on site for around 15 weeks in batches using an all-in, all-out system until they reach approximately 115kg.
The pigs would be reared under the RSPCA Assured scheme, having been born and reared outdoors for 12 weeks before moving to the site. They would be processed at Cranswick’s Watton facility, a 30-minute drive from the farm.
The new sheds would have the most advanced ventilation systems, and the unit has been designed to manage manure and slurry and minimise odour. It is estimated that it would produce 6,720t of manure and 6,300cu m of slurry, which would be channelled and pumped into an underground slurry storage tank. All manure and slurry would be exported off site.
The development also includes solar power, rainwater harvesting and heat recovery systems to boost its environmental credentials.
The pig site is located 2km from Feltwell, and no transport will go through the village, Cranswick said, adding that council highways officers have accepted the proposals.
Poultry plans
A number of old poultry sheds on the site, located just over 1.5km from Methwold, would be demolished and replaced with 20 state-of-the-art chicken sheds.
The plan is to house 714,000 chickens, equating to around five million chickens a year, contributing to about 0.45% of the UK’s annual chicken production.
The new sheds have been designed to provide the most efficient and sustainable housing for poultry in the UK. All chickens would be hatched in-shed, rather than the more typical use of dedicated hatchery facilities, using the industry-leading ‘NestBorn’ on-farm hatching system, while the birds will have 20% more space than the Red Tractor standard.
The backlash
If the proposal, which would go some way to addressing the pig sector’s eternal search for finishing accommodation, makes sense in the context of food production, opponents have been vociferous in their objections.
In December, Methwold Parish Council voted against the proposal. During the meeting, local residents expressed concerns about the effect on the local environment and the impact on traffic from the ‘megafarm’, the BBC reported.
The parish council has asked the borough council to reject the application, and parish council chairman Martin French said he believed the vote will make a difference.
The opposition mixes local concerns with wider issues linked to intensive farming. The Cranswick Objection Group, which is raising funds for its ‘Stop the Mega Farm’ campaign, says: “Here in Norfolk, the villages of Methwold, Feltwell and the surrounding areas are to be blighted by one of the largest factory farms in Europe, housing 6.5 million chickens and 56,000 pigs.”
It accuses Cranswick of trying to create a ‘monstrosity right on our doorstep, without any consideration whatsoever to the local residents, wildlife and fauna’.
“Not only will the stench, noise and swarms of flies be sickening, but the additional HGV traffic on our local country roads will turn a simple journey for us into an absolute nightmare,” the group’s website states.
Despite the outdoor-bred, straw-finishing pig system and the welfare aspects of the poultry proposal, it adds: “These poor creatures must live in cramped conditions all their lives. They are then forced into giant trucks and transported along our narrow country lanes to be slaughtered.”
Various NGOs, including Sustain and Worldwide Fund for Nature, have got involved. Sustain, an alliance of about 100 organisations ‘working for a better system of food and farming’, claims the council has acted ‘unlawfully’ by not asking Cranswick to include a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions assessment in its application.
This leaves the public and the council ‘unable to evaluate its risks to legally binding national and local climate targets’, Sustain said.
In February, Feedback Global and Sustain tried to further undermine the proposals by linking data on environmental regulation breaches in Norfolk and Suffolk over a seven-year period to Cranswick’s ‘US-style megafarm’, ahead of the hearing.
Local MP for south-west Norfolk, Terry Jermy, has been vocal in his opposition, insisting the ‘megafarm approach should be rejected’.
The Labour MP has written to the EA, saying the development would ‘adversely affect people and biodiversity’ in his constituency. “In my view it is bad for the environment, bad for animal welfare and bad for local residents,” he said.
The combination of local opposition, targeted campaign groups and NGOs is reflected in the more than 15,000 complaints received by the council. In contrast, towards the end of last year, there were only eight responses in favour, according to the Daily Mail.
The food security context
Cranswick insists it has addressed all the issues raised in the planning process and was satisfied, for example, that ‘all the necessary information has been included’ as far as GHG emissions are concerned.
A Cranswick spokesperson said: “After all the delays so far, we are very much pushing for a decision on April 3.
“We have been working with the council for three years. There has been lots in the press about the application being unlawful, but we have delivered everything the council has asked us for in terms of the technicalities of the application.
“The whole thing has been designed with pig welfare, environmental sustainability and pollution control in mind and to ensure local residents are not affected by noise, odour or traffic, which is helped by the fact that the nearest village is 1.5km away.”
Cranswick has also launched a detailed website outlining more of the details of the plan, and addressing many of the concerns raised by the local community.
It is also highlighting the benefits of its investment in terms of improving UK food security, describing it as vital for the long-term sustainability of the British pork and poultry sectors and the UK’s national food infrastructure. It points out that the UK only produces about 50% of the pork-based products consumed and 70% of all the chicken consumed.
It said: “The redevelopment of the pig farm helps to secure the supply of British pork, which will be produced in an efficient, sustainable manner and provides a long-term commitment to the UK’s supply chain.”
There will be a lot for the council to consider when, or perhaps if, the hearing takes place in April, both in technical planning terms and the wider arguments. The outcome is impossible to gauge, but Cranswick will be hoping it can break with recent precedent.
Why communication is key in large-scale planning battles
For Amy Jackson, history is repeating itself. One of agriculture’s leading PR consultants for 25 years, Amy was brought in to advise on Nocton Dairies’ application for an 8,000-cow dairy unit in Lincolnshire in 2010-11.
“Fifteen years ago, there was a lot of flak over Nocton and Foston and, if you look at the Cranswick application, the pushback hasn’t changed at all,” she said.
She stressed that there are, of course, many genuine local planning issues raised by applications of this scale around traffic, odour, pollution risk and visual impact, for example, and these should be actively addressed during the planning process.
But she questioned how many of the 15,000 objections submitted to the Cranswick application have come from local residents concerned by local issues.
“With this sort of application, NGOs latch on to the issue and generate objections through template letters. There is still an attitude that ‘we need to fight this because we fundamentally don’t like large-scale farming’,” said Dr Jackson, an expert in communication on complex farming issues around health and welfare and the environment.
She noted how terms like ‘megafarm’ and ‘intensive factory farms’ are used, even if the truth is very different.
“The Cranswick development, for example, raises pigs on straw in sheds of a standard industry size, but the pictures on campaign websites reflect dimly lit slatted systems, or even sow stalls,” she said.
“That said, the concerns around large pig and poultry farms and air and water quality, in particular, have been exacerbated by issues with poultry units in the Wye Valley.”
Ms Jackson said NGO campaigns can have a big effect on planning outcomes because, even if issues like animal welfare are formally outside the scope of the process, the attention puts local councils under huge pressure.
“They can become extremely nervous about approving an application because their case will probably need to be robust enough to withstand an appeal, or even a judicial review,” she said.
Communication is key
But she said applications also pivot on communication at local level. “You have to judge whether your application is going to be noticed, and then whether it’s going to be contentious.
“A key factor is residential housing on or very close to the site. In these cases, engaging one-on-one with local residents to explain the proposal and why they won’t be negatively impacted is crucial.
“There is also a need to address any wider concerns. It is important to be seen as an organisation that is responsive, ‘does the right thing’ and has a good track record.
“After all, large, modern farms can have real advantages in terms of animal welfare, pollution control and emissions by using modern technology to house the animals, delivering the best nutrition and investing in quality stockpeople.
“And, of course, there is always a demand for pork and poultrymeat – if we don’t produce it here under our noses, it will be imported from systems we have no control over. Amid the noise, it is not always easy to get these points across, but we must try.”