Manure rules about-turn to protect rivers

FARMERS have been blocked from spreading manure on their land above levels safe for rivers.

Manures and slurries spread on land can cause river pollution when they run off into water courses, triggering algal blooms.

Guidelines on spreading manures were relaxed by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in March in response to appeals from the farming industry.

However, campaign groups threatened to pursue a judicial review after claiming that the relaxed rules, which enabled higher loads of manure to be spread on some fields, were in breach of environmental laws.

Defra has since dropped the guidelines advising farmers they could spread manure on land above target levels.

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) raised concerns over the about-turn, which it said had come as a surprise.

“We are disappointed that, less than three months after it was published, part of the guidance for farming rules for water has been amended to seemingly prevent some farmers applying organic manures to certain fields,” Tom Bradshaw, NFU deputy president, said. “This change has been made without consultation with the farming industry and we will be speaking to Defra urgently to seek further clarification.”

Guy Linley-adams, solicitor to Salmon and Trout Conservation, which raised the complaint with the Government, said it would help protect polluted lakes and rivers.

He said: “Farmers and land

‘Farmers believed it to be permission [to] spread more manure on their land’

managers would have read the guidance and believed it to be permission [to] spread too much manure on their land risking serious agricultural pollution of watercourses.

“We also call on the majority of farmers, who are responsible farmers, for whom the current set of regulations presents no threat at all, not to allow themselves to be used by the minority of less-than-responsible farmers who do not comply with the law and are allowed, by the [weak] regime operated by the Environment Agency, to cut corners and continue to pollute English rivers.”