Since January 2014 Clyde Shanks has been working in partnership with Moy Park to facilitate its regional expansion of poultry houses across Northern Ireland.

Due to the continued demand for local chicken Moy Park has launched a major grower expansion programme, which aims to increase breeder and broiler growing capacity in Northern Ireland by up to 400 poultry houses by the end of 2016.

To date 107 applications have been submitted across 19 of the 26 former Council areas with 67 approved, providing an additional 118 houses.

Key aspects of the project undertaken by us include day to day managing and monitoring of applications with the aim of expediting the planning process to achieve prompt turnaround times. To date 15 applications have required an accompanying Environmental Statement which we have co-ordinated with input from various technical experts including Air Quality and Ecological consultants.

There have been a number of hurdles to overcome including securing legitimate outlets for poultry litter and ensuring that proposals do not have a negative impact on both designated and undesignated habitats by way of ammonia deposition.

The project is currently undergoing a significant administrative change with the disbandment of a dedicated team within the Ballymena Area Planning Office, ‘The Moy Park Strategic Project Team’ (MPSPT), with decision making now falling to individual case officers within each Council.

On 20th March 2015 Moy Park arranged a training day attended by both DoE Planning and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) in order to highlight best practice achieved to date with the aim of moving forward with the same pro-activeness and pragmatism.

Moy Park has some further 70 applications to come forward in 2015/2016.