The Guardian has reported that guidance that would have allowed farmers to spread manures and slurry on land in a way that would overload it with nutrients and risk pollution of rivers, lakes and coastal waters has been changed by Defra, after a challenge over its lawfulness.

Manures, which include sewage sludge, abattoir waste and slurries, are a leading source of water pollution. Their application is strictly controlled under what are known as the Farming Rules for Water. But Defra’s guidance had directed the Environment Agency not to enforce a breach of the rules if a farmer produced its own manures or used imported manures that could lead to nutrient overload.

Campaign group Salmon and Trout Conservation wrote to environment secretary George Eustice in April threatening judicial review unless the guidance was withdrawn, saying it was “unlawful, as it tells the Environment Agency that land managers can, in effect, breach the 2018 regulations … and that any such breach should not normally be subject to any enforcement”.

Defra rejected the claim in May, saying that “the proposed challenge is without merit”. But earlier this month the department changed the guidance to remove the loophole.

Guy Linley-Adams, solicitor to Salmon and Trout Conservation, said that if the guidance had remained unamended, the organisation would have “pressed forward with an application for judicial review, because in our view, and in the view of counsel instructed by Salmon and Trout Conservation, the guidance, as originally published, encouraged unlawful acts.

“Farmers and land managers would have read the guidance and believed it to be permission, in effect, to spread too much manure on their land risking serious agricultural pollution of watercourses,” he said.

Defra said the guidance had been amended by Eustice to “clarify guidance to the Environment Agency on assessment of soil and crop need when planning nutrient applications” and that it had done so “in response to questions raised by stakeholders”.

The Farming Rules for Water were introduced in 2018 at a time when the European Commission was threatening to take the UK to the European court over its failure to deal with diffuse agricultural pollution and protect rivers under the Water Framework Directive.

The full news piece in the Guardian can be read here.