Environmental permits, by county
274 permits held by 236 companies we hold a profile for, from the Environment Agency's public register of environmental permits.
Intensive livestock installations only, for now. The Environment Agency's register covers several kinds of permit — this page currently holds only the intensive farming category (large pig and poultry units regulated under the Industrial Emissions Directive), which was the one part of the register we could retrieve reliably. Water abstraction and discharge permits are not yet in this dataset.
A permit is a regulatory record, not a judgement: it means a farm's installation meets the scale the Environmental Permitting Regulations apply to (broadly, over 40,000 poultry places, 2,000 production pigs, or 750 sows) and is subject to inspection and emissions conditions as a result. Holding one is routine for a unit of that size, not a sign of a problem.
| County | Companies | Permits |
|---|---|---|
| East Riding of Yorkshire | 31 | 38 |
| North Yorkshire | 27 | 31 |
| Shropshire | 28 | 29 |
| Lincolnshire | 14 | 27 |
| Herefordshire, County of | 15 | 18 |
| Suffolk | 11 | 12 |
| Devon | 9 | 10 |
| Lancashire | 9 | 10 |
| Norfolk | 7 | 8 |
| Nottinghamshire | 7 | 8 |
| Somerset | 8 | 8 |
| Telford and Wrekin | 6 | 7 |
| Kent | 7 | 7 |
| Essex | 6 | 6 |
| Staffordshire | 5 | 5 |
| Gloucestershire | 5 | 5 |
| Worcestershire | 4 | 4 |
| Westmorland and Furness | 2 | 3 |
| West Sussex | 3 | 3 |
| Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole | 1 | 2 |
| Leicestershire | 1 | 2 |
| North Lincolnshire | 1 | 2 |
| North Somerset | 2 | 2 |
| Leeds | 2 | 2 |
| Northumberland | 2 | 2 |
| Warwickshire | 2 | 2 |
| North Northamptonshire | 2 | 2 |
| Dorset | 2 | 2 |
| Cornwall | 2 | 2 |
| Cumberland | 2 | 2 |
| Rotherham | 1 | 1 |
| Oxfordshire | 1 | 1 |
| Bradford | 1 | 1 |
| West Northamptonshire | 1 | 1 |
| Bedford | 1 | 1 |
| Doncaster | 1 | 1 |
| Darlington | 1 | 1 |
| County Durham | 1 | 1 |
| Redcar and Cleveland | 1 | 1 |
| Cambridgeshire | 1 | 1 |
| Wiltshire | 1 | 1 |
| Central Bedfordshire | 1 | 1 |
| Stockport | 1 | 1 |
Environment Agency public register of environmental permits, retrieved 1 August 2026, matched to Companies House by name and postcode district. Sources and licensing · How the join works · Farm business profiles