December 16th, 2025
ELF Cases 2025 Recap
Case Highlight: Sussex Wildlife Trust
ELF celebrated a victory with the Sussex Wildlife Trust in November when the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) conceded they had made a legal error in granting a licence to Brighton Marina which would have allowed the dumping of 100,000 tonnes of dredged sediment in a Marine Conservation Zone and Site of Special Scientific Interest. This nationally important site is home to Short-snouted seahorses, Blue Mussel beds and an intertidal chalk reef.
ELF, with the assistance of Jessica Allen of No.5 Chambers, sent a Pre-Action Protocol Letter which challenged the legality of this decision based on inadequate consideration of ecological evidence. The case was then passed to Rowan Smith and Lucia Perez at Leigh Day who filed the claim.
The MMO eventually agreed the decision was unlawful and it has now been quashed. We anticipate there will be another decision on this application, where the MMO will have to consider the ecological impacts.
ELF hopes the MMO will make the right decision for nature and accept an alternative site must be found for this dumping, to protect this hub for wildlife, and we will be keeping a close eye to ensure this fresh decision is made lawfully. You can read more about this case by following the link here.
Case Highlight: Minster Marshes
ELF has continued to assist Save Minster Marshes; a local action group protecting Minster Marshes nature reserve at Pegwell Bay. This is in response to a Development Consent Order (DCO) known as ‘Sea Link’, a large planning application for new energy infrastructure between Suffolk and Kent.
This nature reserve is an ecological superhighway, connecting the Bay with the rest of the Southeast, and is home to hundreds of endangered birds and species such as eels, beavers, otters and voles. Sea Link proposes to build a large converter station and substation on the reserve, which will take away a crucial habitat from a vast amount of wildlife.
The DCO entered the examination stage of the process this Autumn. With the help of Edward-Arash Abedian of Landmark Chambers and the UCL Legal Clinic, we have assisted the group with highlighting the current failures of the application when taking the reserve into account in this ongoing examination process.
It is vital the voice of nature is not lost in these large infrastructure projects, and ELF will continue to support the group in making sure the voice of this reserve is heard. You can read more about this case here.
Article on ELF Factory Farming Cases:
ELF is marking a number of notable community successes challenging factory farms in 2025. These cases reflect a shift in the legal framework around environmental impacts of these developments, proving decision makers need to take greater consideration of these issues or they may be liable to legal challenge.
Context
Factory farms are environmental and ethical disasters. They fuel climate change through emissions, contaminate and destroy natural habitats which wildlife depend on, impact the health of local communities and subject animals to unimaginable conditions. Pollution from agriculture is now the biggest source of water pollution in the UK and is mainly caused by excess animal waste being spread onto land and running into watercourses. Despite this, there has been an expansion of intensive livestock development in recent years, growing from 1,621 in 2017 to 1,824 in 2023, with the UK currently having the second highest number of intensive farms in Europe.
Reflectively, ELF has a seen a marked increase in factory farming enquiries that come to us, concerning both current developments and industrial farming units in the planning pipeline. These expansions are often focused on certain geographical areas such as the Wye and Norfolk, the latter of which has been dubbed the ‘megafarm capital of Europe’. UK environmental and planning law is failing to prevent the harm caused by these applications. However, ELF has seen multiple successes this year with regards to these applications, in part due to recent decisions which have changed how these applications must be considered by decision makers.
ELF Case Studies
A major victory for ELF was the rejection of one of the largest megafarms in Europe back in April in Methwold, West Norfolk. Jan Palmer, a local community member, got in touch with ELF about this application concerned about the implications the farm would have on her local community. ELF assisted with advice and objecting to this application, which had not assessed greenhouse gas emissions. This has been common practice for intensive livestock unit (ILU) applications but, following the landmark decision of Finch in 2024 where it was decided by the Supreme Court that a decision to permit expansion of an oil field was unlawful as it failed to consider direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, everything has changed. The Methwold case was a clear example of this. The Council heavily relied on the Finch principle in making the decision to refuse the application; the first time an ILU has been refused on climate grounds. This case has set a new precedent that climate impacts must be fully assessed on ILU’s, a requirement which will expose the damage these ILU’s cause.
A second success was working with the Coalition Against Factory Farming (CAFF), where we assisted with a challenge against the grant of permission for an application for the erection of six poultry sheds in Melton Constable, Norfolk, which would have housed 310,000 broiler chickens. ELF sent a Pre-Action Protocol letter with the assistance of Maya Pardo of CAFF and Helen Hamilton of Marches Planning. In this letter, we highlighted several legal errors including the failure to address the environmental impact of manure spreading, breaches of the EIA regulations and the error of the planning officer in stating animal welfare is not a material planning consideration. Following this, the Council consented to judgment and the decision was quashed. Manure was a key issue in this matter, and the recent March 2025 decision in the National Farmers Union case has further empowered Local Authorities to take environmental harm caused by agriculture into account.
We had a further success with CAFF when a Pre-Action Protocol letter we sent challenging planning permission for two poultry houses producing over 500,000 broiler chickens a year resulted in the decision being overturned. With the help of Maya, Acland Bryant of Garden Court Chambers and Matthew McFeeley of Richard Buxton Solicitors, ELF sent a letter which raised several grounds including the EIA screening being unlawful due to its failure to properly assess cumulative and downstream environmental impacts. This followed on from Caffyn, a case from earlier this year which established further requirements under the EIA Regulations to assess impacts of spreading digestate following Finch. The quashing of this decision shows once again providing information from adequate environmental assessments is no longer optional.
Finally, we have had a series of successes in the ongoing case of Cherry Tree Farm, operated by Cranswick in Norfolk, which we wrote about here. ELF has been consistently pressing the Council to address severe legal failings with the retrospective applications and planning breaches. With ELF’s assistance, permission for the retrospective applications was refused. The local community in this case are now dealing with planning appeals submitted by Cranswick, and ELF will continue to support the community in challenges.
Conclusion
There is a long way to go to prevent the environmental harm from industrial farming. However, the tide is turning, and ELF is seeing an emerging trend which is finally recognising the damage these developments cause. ELF hopes to see the caselaw continue to build on these matters and we shall be active in assisting communities who wish to tackle such developments get the help they need.