Clean energy firm risked spreading bovine TB across Wales, High Court told

Workers for a green energy company planning new electricity pylons across Wales risked spreading disease among cattle by entering lands “under active bovine TB restrictions”, the High Court has heard.

Natalie Barstow, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and the Land Justice Coalition are taking legal action against Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru over how the firm is carrying out its proposed new project.

The campaigners say the company has acted unlawfully in not giving proper notice when visiting land and failing to take adequate steps to prevent the spread of disease, which the campaigners say is a risk to protected species and people’s livelihoods.

Green GEN Cymru is defending the legal claim, which relates to a network of electric cables being built across Wales on pylons and underground.

Sasha Blackmore KC, for the campaigners, said in written submissions to a High Court hearing in Cardiff on Tuesday that Green GEN Cymru was “promoting a project the scale of HS2” across more than 200km (124 miles) of Wales.

She told the court it served notice to enter land for surveys in August 2024 and turned up “without telling people” more than 15 months later to gather data ahead of compulsory purchase orders.

The barrister said that the company risked spreading animal diseases across the area.

She said: “The defendant enters in visibly dirty and non-disinfectable clothing/footwear; without adequate policies for biosecurity or health or safety and even with out-of-date inadequate insurance.

“The defendant has been photographed or recorded doing so in land under active bovine TB restrictions, in badger setts, in SSSI (sites of special scientific interest) land and watercourses housing globally endangered protected species vulnerable to inadequate disinfection with no evidence of qualified ecologists.”

She said that farmers were “worried to leave their farms” in case workers from the company turned up in their absence.

The campaigners are seeking a declaration that Green GEN Cymru has acted unlawfully, while Ms Barstow, who believes an outbreak of bovine TB on her family farm may have been caused by surveyors, is seeking damages.

Philip Coppel KC, for the company, said in written submissions that “there is no evidence of any causal link between the defendant’s surveys and any biosecurity issue”.

He said the campaigners seemed to want to use the claim to stop the pylon project, where the “principal objective is delaying the projects in the hope that they may go away altogether”.

He described the approach to the claim as “a mess”, with complaints about dirty boots and lack of notice “being cherry-picked” in “an emotive and partial manner”.

Mr Coppel added that there was “considerable opposition” to the work being carried out, the importance of which he said “cannot be overstated” in helping to meet the Government’s decarbonisation goals.

He said: “One respect in which this has been manifested is in seeking to resist access for carrying out surveys.

“This has necessitated applications for warrants where it has been clear that access cannot be obtained without the use of force.”

The barrister said: “The claimants describe these projects as being the same scale as HS2 but this is a meaningless comparison since HS2 is a railway line; they are electricity lines carried on pylons, poles or, in short sections, underground.

“They will no doubt have material visual effects on the areas through which they pass, but the defendant promotes the projects on the basis that such effects are demonstrably outweighed by the benefits of the projects, and by the greater risks of doing nothing.”

The hearing, before Mr Justice Kimblin, is due to conclude on Wednesday.