By
More than 100 applications for new farm buildings, including poultry sheds, used fake soil samples. Photo by lbgroup2018, Creative Commons
A widespread farm planning scandal has not been properly investigated by councils or Stormont, a damning report by the Audit Office has found.
The Detail revealed last year that false soil sample results were submitted as part of more than 100 applications for farm sheds and biogas plants, in a bid to bypass environmental legislation.
Now a report, published today by Northern Ireland’s Auditor General and Local Government Auditor, has found that public confidence in the planning system “has been undermined” by councils’ and the Department for Infrastructure’s response to the scandal.
The potential fraud involved almost 3,500 false soil samples, submitted as part of 108 planning applications over nine council areas between 2015 and 2022.
Soil samples must be submitted to show a farmer’s fields can absorb extra animal waste generated in any new farm shed and that the slurry will not run off into streams and rivers.
Slurry run-off has been blamed for causing toxic blue-green algae which choked Lough Neagh last summer.
The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) first became aware of the farm planning scandal in October 2022.
It found that laboratory reports on the soil samples had been altered or made up.
The Audit Office report found:
- Even though the NIEA alerted all nine councils affected in 2022, they were slow to start fraud investigations
- Some councils questioned whether any fraud had even happened
- The Department for Infrastructure (DfI), the lead planning authority, was “unwilling” to get directly involved
- Public confidence in the planning system “has been undermined” by councils’ and DfI’s response
- Ineffective controls failed to uncover the fake samples earlier
- Lessons were not learned from an earlier farm planning scandal in 2021 when fake documents were submitted as part of applications for poultry sheds
The Detail can reveal that the scandal is still continuing.
NIEA asked some applicants who submitted fake samples to send in new ones.
But when the resubmitted samples in five applications were checked, tests found discrepancies in the results.
A NIEA spokeswoman said that, in four applications, it had “concerns that the results of their sampling did not concur with the sample results submitted by the applicant”.
The fifth application included “discrepancies with the information relied upon”, the spokeswoman said.
And the scandal may be even more widespread.
The Audit Office has recommended that NIEA should retest more soil samples but were told this may not be possible “due to resourcing pressures”, the report stated.
Alarming response
Nine councils - Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council; Fermanagh and Omagh District Council; Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council; Mid Ulster District Council; Newry, Mourne and Down District Council; Mid and East Antrim Borough Council; Derry City and Strabane District Council; Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council; Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council - are affected by the scandal.
Last year, the PSNI launched an investigation, which is still continuing.
The Audit Office began investigating the councils’ and Stormont’s response in March last year after a member of the public raised concerns about how the scandal was being handled.
The local government auditor, Colette Kane, said the councils’ response was concerning.
“It is alarming and a matter of great concern that any council could consider the submission of falsified information in a planning application to be anything other than potential fraud,” she said.
The Department for Infrastructure (DfI) was also criticised for its poor response.
“It is concerning that DfI, the department with responsibility for oversight of the NI planning system, considered it inappropriate to get more directly involved to ensure that all nine affected councils had initiated an investigation into potential planning fraud,” the report stated.
“Furthermore, it is disappointing that it was unwilling to act as a regional point of co-ordination between the affected councils and PSNI.”
The report made a series of recommendations, including that councils review their policies to make sure fake information in planning applications is investigated as potential fraud, and that the DfI takes a more active role in widespread planning fraud issues.
Lessons Not Learned
The report said that lessons should have been learned in 2021, when a separate farm planning scandal was uncovered.
The Republic of Ireland’s agri-food agency, Teagasc, discovered that some poultry farming planning applications in Northern Ireland had included falsified documents purporting to come from them.
The Audit Office found that if councils had handled the poultry applications scandal better, the soil samples issue might have been spotted earlier.
“Had the advice of DfI to check the authenticity of the Teagasc reports been considered more widely, then the weaknesses exploited in the current case may have been discovered at an earlier point,” the report stated.
“It is concerning that insufficiently robust action in 2021 may have contributed to a continuation of the issues identified in this report.”
The report recommended that DfI and the councils should launch a review into the poultry applications scandal.