The battle to block Britain's biggest mega farm

Yahoo

06-02-2025

Blink and you will miss the white, laminated single sheet of A4 paper tied to a farm gateway next to the B1112 on the outskirts of the Breckland village of Methwold.
It shows the details of a planning application and is the only visible hint I spot that this quiet, rural community is, in the words of its local MP, currently in 'uproar' over its contents: the desire to build, on the farm's doorstep, what is claimed will be Britain's biggest 'mega farm' – where 14,000 pigs and 714,000 hens will be reared indoors.
'People don't take to the streets in this part of Norfolk,' explains Labour's Terry Jermy, 'or wave placards and banners, but the local King's Lynn and West Norfolk Council has already received well over 1,500 objections, which is unusually high. Even local farmers, who you might think would support it, are telling me quite plainly that they regard the proposal as completely alien'.
One of their number neatly summed up the root cause of their anger, recalls Jermy, who caused a 'Portillo moment' in the 2024 General Election when he overturned Liz Truss's 26,000 majority to take South West Norfolk by 630 votes. 'He told me, 'this isn't farming. It is industrialisation'.'
The hotly contested application, which has already spent almost three years in the planning process, has been submitted by Cranswick, a major producer of pork and chicken for domestic supermarkets. We stand under grey skies staring out over the proposed site, the sort of vast expanse of flat, dry, sandy-soiled, former heathland that characterises the Brecklands. Jermy warns: 'If this one gets approved there will be more mega farms to come, so this is a national test case.'
The proposed site would join 1,176 mega farms around the UK – a rise of 20 per cent since 2016 according to the animal welfare charity, Compassion in World Farming – with Norfolk in the top three counties for such intensive farms. Some, including Cranswick's spokesman, dismiss 'mega farm' as 'an emotive term' and there is so far no official definition for one in the UK – or agreed planning model against which to measure it, as in some European countries.
But in the USA the numbers required to earn mega-farm status are 125,000 broiler chickens (those reared for their meat) and 2,500 pigs. By that standard, the Methwold development easily qualifies.
Mega farms are multiplying not only because of the drive to grow more of the food we eat – Cranswick's motto is 'from farm to fork' – but also out of the wider push for economic growth that is so central to the government's agenda in rural as well as industrial areas. In that context, as a Labour MP, Jermy should arguably be backing the plans, not opposing them. But what the battle in Methwold demonstrates is the tension between unblocking the path to growth (especially in the planning system) while still responding to constituents' often justified concerns about what is going on in their own back yard.
Cranswick already has a pig unit on the Methwold site, a former Second World War airfield. Among the reasons its plans have fallen foul of local opinion has been what members of the 1,000-strong Cranswick Objection Group (COG) allege is a recurring lack of candour with local people.
'They won't engage with us and have even refused to come along to a meeting organised by the parish council,' claims resident and member Mike Palmer, a recent retiree with a professional background 'that includes litigation', who meets me for a cuppa at Hubbles café. 'Most of us only found out about their plans by word of mouth. That planning notice on the gate was one of very few put up. There has been no listening to the community.'
His claim is disputed by Cranswick's spokesperson. 'We offered to join a virtual meeting, but we judged as too high the risk of animal activists attending a public meeting and posing a danger to our staff.' For the same reason the spokesman asks not to be named, but suggests that 'a one-to-one meeting' or 'something on a small group basis' might still be possible with the objectors.
Once locals woke up to the scale of what was proposed, their opposition quickly hardened. Sitting alongside Palmer is one of the founders of COG, Shirley De'Ath, who retired from her animal charity role to move here from London three years ago in search of a more peaceful life in the countryside. 'It has taken over our lives and even if we wanted to move, we can't. Estate agents are already knocking 25 per cent off asking prices because of these plans.'
Another concerned resident, fiftysomething travel agent Jan Palmer (no relation to Mike), takes me to the single-track access road Cranswick is planning to use for their new facility. Maintained by the county council, it is tarred in its early stages to allow access to an existing small recycling facility and an old quarry, then turns to rough mud and stones as it approaches what will be the new entrance to the mega farm.
'Like many others in Methwold, we use this green lane to ride our bikes, or horses, to walk dogs and to get access to Thetford Forest without having to go near a busy road,' she says. 'If the plans go ahead, we are going to meet HGVs coming down here.' Upwards of 10,000 a year will be trundling here past the local Iceni Academy secondary school, according to traffic surveys shared with COG.
That feeds into a widespread feeling in the community that the applicants aren't providing an accurate picture of their plans, something Cranswick strongly denies. 'We have complied with and satisfied every aspect which the council has requested.'
However, one of the reasons that a decision on the proposal has been long delayed is that the council has needed to repeatedly ask for clarification on 'insufficiencies' highlighted in their submitted figures, by independent reports commissioned or shared by COG.
These include key issues such as the need for increased water abstraction in an area where reserves already run low each summer, the potential damage done to aquifers, the impact of the huge amount of slurry and manure produced, ammonia released into the air by pig urine, and nitrates into the soil that will wash off into the local chalk streams that are designated as being of international importance.
'We have been very straight,' insists their spokesman. 'We have worked hard to answer all additional questions and keep our application up to date'.
One person who knows all about the threat ammonia poses is Ann Cuthbert, a healthcare practitioner who has lived for 35 years in nearby Stow Bedon – another Breckland village where Cranswick extended an existing pig unit at Cherry Tree Farm. 'Before they came, we never had cause to complain,' she says. 'But these are not normal countryside smells.
'If I am in the garden when the ammonia is released without warning, my eyes and nose sting so much I have to come inside. It gets into the top of your lungs, causes nausea and vomiting, and it can go on for days. You can't escape the smell even indoors.'
In the past four years since Cranswick took over Cherry Tree Farm, there have been almost 500 complaints made to the Environment Agency – 150 in 2024 alone. But nothing has changed. 'We send reports and we don't get a reply,' says Cuthbert. Cranswick asserts that its work there 'meets all Environment Agency standards' and that the buildings are of an 'industry-leading' standard.
The local council has also been alerted that what was built here is not in line with the approved plans. Where there were meant to be solid walls, there are instead heavy curtains that can be pulled back, something that residents believe contributes to the appalling air pollution. Cranswick's response has been to submit an application for retrospective planning permission that has now been in limbo for four years.
'I used to enjoy a walk across the fields near the unit with my dogs to visit family graves in the churchyard at Breckles, but the smell makes that impossible,' says Cuthbert. 'I feel like all the people who should be helping us are just shrugging their shoulders and leaving us to it.'
Cuthbert's experience is mirrored elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk, counties where the growth of mega farms has been most marked in recent years. There have been more than 700 incidents of such industrial-scale facilities in East Anglia violating environmental standards in the last seven years, according to data collected following a Freedom of Information request by campaigning groups Sustain and Feedback Global.
In Methwold, the community is pinning its hopes of avoiding a similar fate on blocking the new facility before it is built. COG has raised £15,000 to submit its own expert reports to challenge the figures for increased traffic and air and ground pollution provided by Cranswick in their application, and has enlisted the active support of both Sustain and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
'We've got involved because there are thousands of pages of technical information involved in such planning applications and it is very hard for communities like Methwold to have the time or expertise to scrutinise them properly,' says Jake White, head of legal advocacy at WWF.
Among the issues that COG has been able to identify as a result is just how close the planned mega farm will be to no fewer than 13 protected Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). As Jan Palmer demonstrates on our walk next to the proposed site, the 14 buildings holding the pigs and the 20 sheds for the chickens will stand within 20 metres of an SSSI where rare stone-curlews, woodlarks and nightjars nest. Official advice is that intensive farm facilities should be several kilometres away from such places because of risks that include the spread of avian flu.
White says that WWF is willing to consider legal action over environmental concerns. These include the failure of Cranswick's current proposals to quantify the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the facility. For its part, the company points out that a carbon impact assessment 'wasn't a required part of the application process'.
This isn't the only area of the country where environmental campaigners are standing in the way of projects that claim to benefit the local economy. Friends of the Earth were among those involved in blocking the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria on climate change grounds. Proponents said it would bring jobs to an area of high unemployment.
Similar claims are being made about Chancellor Rachel Reeves' recent pledge to build a third runway at Heathrow, and a raft of other infrastructure projects to boost growth that she unveiled at the same time – but again she has faced backlash from those who say they run counter to our net-zero commitments.
The unemployment rate is low in south-west Norfolk, but low wages are a problem. Cranswick's new facility will be heavily automated, only bringing four new jobs in total, but its spokesman says it will boost the wider economy by providing a home-grown alternative to almost half of all pork we eat that is currently imported.
These tangled arguments must now be unravelled by King's Lynn and West Norfolk Council, which is run by a coalition of Independents, Greens and Liberal Democrats. In the summer of 2021, it voted to declare a climate emergency and reduce its target date to reach net zero from 2050 to 2035. That should surely damn the Cranswick application, points out COG's Mike Palmer, especially when Natural England, the government's advisor on the natural environment, has also entered its own objections to the plans.
The planning committee meets on April 3. Jan Palmer will be among those going along and breaking the local habit of not making a big fuss by making their voices heard by their elected representatives.
'People here are really very cross and very scared that soon they won't be able to enjoy their gardens, that their children will grow up with pollution, and that it will kill the tourist trade in this area,' she says. 'If Cranswick was trying to produce anything other than animals here, it wouldn't be allowed but because it is treated as agri-enterprise factory farming it somehow manages to slide under the law.'
She insists that the people of Methwold are not Nimbys, 'but Niabys' –- Not In Anyone's Back Yard.
Jermy, himself from a long line of farmers, is backing the campaign (something he feels contributed to his narrow general election victory in 2024 when Truss sat on the fence over the plans) because he also sees wider implications of the new unit being allowed. 'I am not going to be too negative about Cranswick who, I am sure, are doing everything they can to support animal welfare.'
But he insists there are drawbacks to intensive farming. 'We need to have a conversation about what sort of farming we want. I think, currently, we are going in the wrong direction towards mega farms.'
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.