Last month, Cranswick’s planning proposal for a large farm in Norfolk was rejected after a three year process that attracted national attention, including from activist groups. Here, Barry Lock, Managing Director, Cranswick East Anglia, and Councillor Tom Ryves, who rejected the proposal, explain the two sides of the long running battle.
“A bad day for our industry”
By Barry Lock, Managing Director, Cranswick East Anglia
I was incredibly disappointed that our application to modernise two livestock farms in West Norfolk was rejected recently. As we said at the time: this was a bad day for the sustainable production of British meat.
We are currently reviewing the decision and considering the options available to us. As we carry out this process, the reasons for our proposed redevelopment remain as strong as ever. This is all about investing over £30m in modern, sustainable, high quality, agricultural infrastructure to ensure the long-term supply of more British pork and chicken.
Elsewhere in this edition, readers will see some of the arguments that were made against our application. We feel it would be a more useful exercise at this stage to reflect on what independent parties in the industry had to say.
For example, this is what Nick Allen, the CEO of the British Meat Processors Association, said after the hearing:
“Cranswick…were seeking approval for an application to redevelop a pig and poultry unit which will contribute jobs and economic activity to the area and play its part in shoring up Britain’s increasingly precarious domestic food security.
“Despite the fact that the Environment Agency has approved the site to house up to 29,000 pigs Cranswick’s proposal was only for 14,000 reared in extra space to RSPCA Assured standards. And yet the application suffered another refusal by a committee that struggled to answer simple questions about the proposal and had to be corrected over erroneous information at one point.”
During the meeting itself, Councillors also heard from Dr Jason Aldiss, a veterinary surgeon and director of the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers. This is what he said:
“Consider the facts: Cranswick’s chicken production emits 32% less carbon than the UK industry average. [Cranswick’s] pig production emits 54% less than the UK average, thanks to reduced soya, locally grown feed, and advanced manure management. All soya used is certified 100% deforestation-free, and inclusion has been reduced from 18% to under 10% in pig diets since 2020. The poultry and pig units will be powered in part by solar PV and heat recovery systems, helping reduce fossil fuel use. All manure will be stored safely and used as fertiliser under NVZ and Environment Agency guidelines.
“Compare that to large-scale producers in Asia or South America, where deforestation, poor feed efficiency, and lack of regulation are major concerns. This site is not only environmentally responsible—it’s leading the way.”
Other commentators and experts have made similar points. The journalist Ross Clark summed it up well in an article for The Spectator a few days after the hearing: “a farm like that turned down in Norfolk would help boost the rural economy and foster national food security, which given the current geopolitical situation is not a bad thing.
For us at Cranswick, we were particularly disappointed that some critics of our proposal chose to ignore the investment which Cranswick has made in Norfolk’s economy. We started operating in East Anglia in 2009. Since then, we have invested over £200m in factory and farming operations, and we have increased our employee base in the area from 1,000, when we acquired Bowes of Norfolk, to over 3,500 colleagues. When you add that to our local supply chain across Norfolk, we are without a doubt one of the biggest investors, and employers, in Norfolk and the wider region.
Criticism of the proposals did not take into account that the site was already an operational pig farm housing 7,500 pigs, and has been a working farm since the 1960s. The proposals on the table would see redevelopment and modernisation of existing farm building, and improvements to a pig farm that already has an Environment Agency permit for 29,000 pigs. Councillors were invited to see the site, and understand the distance from the nearest homes and plans in place for traffic throughout the process, however only visited the day before the Committee hearing.
One of the main reasons given for rejecting our proposal was the reported lack of a climate change assessment. But throughout the process, we engaged constructively with the council and in line with our legal obligations – supplying all documents and evidence we were asked for. It was therefore incredibly disappointing that council officers recommended refusal on the basis of insufficient environmental information relating to climate change. This information was not requested despite numerous meetings with the planning officers and their appointed consultants, Reading Agricultural Consultants.
The bigger point here is that if we want to reduce UK carbon emissions, we must reduce meat imports from abroad. Right now, the UK is only 50% self-sufficient in pork and 70% in chicken. We are already starting to see shortages of chicken on supermarket shelves as demand continues to increase. All of this is only going to lead to more foreign imports, with higher emissions and lower welfare standards. There is a risk that chlorinated chicken from the US will be allowed, despite recent commitments from the Government not to allow this.
For all of these reasons, and many others, we strongly believe our application should have been taken forward. This isn’t just about boosting UK economic growth. It isn’t just about lower food prices for consumers. This isn’t just about creating new opportunities for local jobs and growth. This is about ensuring we are able to supply the food this country needs.
“Arrogance is an expensive business”
By Cllr Tom Ryves, Methwolthree
I am the ward councillor for Methwold in Norfolk, the site of the failed planning application by Cranswick.
The case will be of great significance because the application was rejected after a three year process because of the emissions this huge operation would generate, especially as the site is adjacent to the Breckland Special Protection Area, covering an area of heathland, forest, and arable farmland straddling the Norfolk and Suffolk borders, and a number of local SSSI’s. As such any decision to proceed would itself have been unlawful following a number of recent high-profile cases. Cranswick recognised this and sought therefore to base consideration of emissions on their fallback case, which was the permitted pig population of the site. This was not an acceptable approach as the law clearly requires that inevitable and downstream emissions are quantifiable (re Finch). Cranswick’s case failed as it chose to not carry out such an assessment.
Readers will note that Cranswick seeks to blame the planning system for its failure – nothing could be further from the truth. Officers bent over backwards to assist the food giant, bur Cranswick proved incapable of submitting accurate data when requested and this caused a three-year delay in the process. But of course, this is not their fault! The key issue was the failure of Cranswick, even after three years, to demonstrate that the emissions from the megafarm would be acceptable given the site that they chose, absurdly, is on the margins of a very important SSSI.
Of great interest was the reciprocal support between the community and the local farming community. S W Norfolk is essentially agricultural and it was apparent that a development on the size of that put forward was an existential threat to smaller non corporate farms, and indeed to human health as it sought to combine an annual capacity of 6,000,000 chickens and 55,000 pigs on one large site ( so it would have represented some 10% of the applicants chicken crop pa and 3% of its pig production.)
That said it may well be that this application marks the zenith of the industrial meat production industry as the fundamental (non-planning ) argument on which Cranswick relied was that developments such as this support the drive for self-sufficiency. As many others I scrutinised this claim and found (as all chicken farmers will know) that the high inputs required (not just of imported South American soy but also UK produced animal crops) mean that this sort of development does the exact opposite. As Defra itself notes, we can only be self-sufficient as a country if we reduce the amount of industrial meat we produce. This view combines with the complimentary view that there are health implications of eating a diet dependent on factory produced meats, and old hands will be only too aware of the difference in the content of today’s chickens to those we enjoyed as children.
From a SW Norfolk point of view, we support the smaller farms whose values align with ours and support the inevitable trend away from factory raised livestock, and recognise the interdependence of rural communities and farmers. Indeed, a very recent application for a smaller local producer to upgrade capacity from 120,000 to 330,000 chickens was successful and was not opposed by the community. Cranswick would have brought no benefits whatsoever to our local economy and given the very high concentration of large industrial mega farms in the East of England we are grateful to a planning regime which requires a balanced view, and for the guidance of the courts as stated in the Finch, Herefordshire and Squires cases. If The conclusion is that applications such as this can only succeed where the environmental effects are clearly understood and assessed.
We hope that the industry will learn from this debacle and recognise the need for balanced growth and for consideration of all stakeholders in the countryside. Arrogance is an expensive business.