Labour’s plan to ease planning regulations for farmers could lead to severe river pollution from chicken waste, environmental campaigners have warned.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed recently announced proposals allowing farmers to build larger chicken sheds, sparking concerns that this would create “megafarms” and worsen water contamination.

Reed unveiled the plans at the Oxford Farming Conference, aiming to mend strained relations with farmers upset over inheritance tax changes and subsidy cuts. His speech at Oxford’s Examination Schools was partially drowned out by protesting farmers, with tractor horns blaring outside.

Reed said: “Planning rules have got in the way for too long. We will speed up the system so you can grow and diversify your farm business, such as chicken producers who need a larger shed to increase the amount of food they produce.”

Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, criticised the proposals, warning they would result in more chicken faeces entering UK rivers.

He said: “The last thing we need in parts of the country like the River Wye is yet more chicken sheds to result in yet more chicken shit going into our rivers, causing yet more pollution. While all of us want to make it easier for farmers to make a decent living out of producing good quality food, we don’t need yet more of a particular form of polluting farming.”

The rapid growth of chicken farming in England has already been linked to the ecological decline of rivers like the Wye. Large-scale poultry farms generate vast amounts of waste, which is often spread on fields. Rainfall then washes this waste into rivers, causing nutrient pollution that fuels excessive algae and plant growth, depleting oxygen levels and harming aquatic life.

In the Severn and Wye river valleys alone, over 51 million chickens are industrially farmed—equivalent to 79 chickens per person in the region.

David Walsh, the head of public affairs at WWF-UK, said: “Intensive poultry production, such as with megafarms, are one of the leading causes of river pollution from the Wye to Norfolk. Simplifying planning rules without increasing the resources of environmental regulators would be a recipe for disaster. More intensively reared, low-quality meat fed on imported soy would be at odds with our global environmental commitments to cut emissions and end the UK’s contribution to deforestation overseas.”

Anthony Field, the head of Compassion in World Farming UK, said: “This is an extremely worrying announcement. Rather than relaxing planning rules, the government should be tightening them up, to stop the spread of industrial farming.”

Reed also apologised for the controversial inheritance tax changes introduced in the budget, which will subject many farmers’ assets to taxation after death for the first time in decades. These changes triggered widespread protests, including a major demonstration in Westminster with around 10,000 farmers.

He said: “We were shocked by the size of the financial black hole [left by the previous government] and I’m sorry some of the actions we had to take shocked you in return.” But, he added, “the tax policy was announced in the budget and it stands”.

Highlighting farmers’ financial struggles, Reed noted that many earn just a 0.5% return on their assets, with average annual incomes around £30,000. However, National Farmers’ Union president Tom Bradshaw criticised the proposals as insufficient, stating that the government had lost the trust of the farming community.

He said: “I think [the government] needs to rapidly recognise that this situation could spiral and that they really should sit down around the table. So the chancellor is who we need to speak to, and so far, she’s refused to engage.”

Bradshaw added that Reed “has to regain the confidence of farmers” and said that if the government did not spend the nature friendly farming budget to make up for the subsidy cuts, “we’ll be asking serious questions about whether we have confidence in Defra as a department”.