In this case, the community managed to successfully judicially review a grant of planning permission on the basis that the farm’s environmental impact assessment failed to adequately assess the environmental effects of odour and noise.
A local action group, Tasley Chicken Factory Farm Action Group, was involved in a six-year fight against a planning application to build four large commercial broiler poultry sheds (300 feet long x 80 feet wide), processing 1.5 million chickens a year close to the town of Bridgnorth. Following a successful legal challenge in the Court of Appeal (R(Squire) v Shropshire Council [2019] EWCA Civ 888),
Shropshire Council’s original decision to approve the intensive chicken farm at Tasley was quashed in early summer 2019. In reviewing the grant of planning permission to build an industrial facility housing 210,000 chickens, Lindblom LJ quashed the planning permission because a complete environmental impact assessment had not been undertaken - specifically, a proper assessment of the environmental effects of odour and noise were not given in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). A revised planning permission application was again submitted, and the council rejected it in 2021. An inspector then backed the rejection decision in 2023. The applicant chose not to appeal the decision to the courts, and the case is now closed.
(Description copied from Rights of Nature Toolkit: How to Protect Rivers in England and Wales)
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