R (Caffyn) v Shropshire Council

On February 20, 2025, the claimant, Alison Caffyn, filed an application for judicial review challenging Shropshire Council’s decision to grant planning permission for an intensive poultry unit (IPU) at a local farm. The facility was expected to generate large volumes of manure, much of which would be treated in an anaerobic digester to produce digestate for use as fertilizer. The claim focused on the adequacy of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conducted under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017, and on compliance with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. The claimant argued, relying on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in R (Finch) v Surrey County Council [2024] UKSC 20, that the Council was required to assess the indirect environmental effects of spreading manure and digestate on farmland and watercourses. She emphasized that ammonia emissions and nitrogen deposition from poultry units already placed designated sites in Shropshire under severe ecological pressure, with levels reaching 200–600% of critical thresholds . The Council, however, treated the transfer of manure to an anaerobic digester as a mitigation measure and did not conduct a substantive assessment of the downstream impacts of digestate spreading. Fordham J held that the Council’s approach was unlawful. Although officers had collected information, they failed to make the evaluative judgments required by Finch on causation and on the capability of meaningful assessment of indirect effects . The judge found that processing manure into digestate did not break the causal chain between the IPU and subsequent environmental effects, and that the impacts of digestate—such as nutrient pollution, ammonia emissions, and contributions to climate-relevant air and water quality degradation—were sufficiently connected to the project to require assessment . The Council had also erred in excluding certain “in-combination” projects from its Habitats Regulations assessment. On June 17, 2025, the Court quashed the planning permission and ordered the Council to pay the claimant’s costs.