Some of our neighbouring counties over the border in England are also concerned about the proliferation of Intensive Poultry Units (IPUs) in our landscape, with the impacts of ammonia, nitrogen deposition and phosphates on biodiversity and human health, and the consequent deterioration of rural living conditions and our rural landscapes.

In Spring 2019 four of the NGOs who have these concerns met in Shropshire to discuss the issue. These organisations were the Herefordshire and Shropshire branches of Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Shropshire Wildlife Trust (SWT) and us, the Brecon & Radnor branch of Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW).

CPRW already have a database of IPUs in Powys and have published various maps on our website (here and here) illustrating the issue in our county. The two CPREs and SWT have also been developing a comprehensive record of IPUs in their own counties.

It was agreed at the meeting to form a combined CPRE/SWT/CPRW team to rationalise and consolidate the various IPU datasets across the counties, and to build on CPRW’s work by developing some combined maps from this data to illustrate the IPU issues across the three counties.

Therefore here is some further background to the project, and our first few combined cross-border IPU maps, with data to hand as at July 2019. We hope you “enjoy” them!