After 15 Years and a Third Court Win, a Norfolk Farming Couple Saves a Rare Wetland

A farming couple in Norfolk, England, have won a third major legal victory after 15 years of fighting regulators to save a rare wetland. The High Court ruled in their favour this month, in a judgment being seen as a landmark for environmental protection.

Tim and Geli Harris farm 460 acres in the Norfolk Broads. Attached to their farm is Catfield Fen, one of the finest calcareous fens in western Europe and an internationally important habitat.

Lady Justice Lieven found that Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, had failed in its statutory duty to protect the fen from pollution. Nitrates and phosphates washing from arable fields have been polluting the wetland’s water.

The fen is home to 2,500 species, including rarities such as the fen orchid and crested buckler fern, breeding bitterns and swallowtail butterflies.

In her judgment, the judge sharply criticised Natural England’s inaction since the Harrises first reported the pollution in 2021. She said the cause of the pollution was a matter of the most basic common sense, and that action by the conservation watchdog was required.

The couple have spent 15 years and 1.5 million pounds of their own money holding government agencies to account. The fen is part of a Special Area of Conservation protected by law and lies within the Broads national park.

In Tim’s words, this is bigger than a little ditch in Norfolk. He fears regulatory inertia is preventing pollution from being halted on waterways across the country. He calls the judgment a landmark because it says the agencies cannot simply do nothing.

The couple bought the farm in 1994 wanting to live closer to nature; a large chunk of Catfield Fen came with it. They turned their own arable fields into pasture to prevent soil and pollution washing into the fen, and they keep English white park cattle, sheep and rare-breed Eriskay ponies.

For Geli, the fen is a little bit of wildness and mystery. She says there are places in it where they have never been — pure nature. Tim says it has taken 1,000 years to create the fen, yet people could destroy it very quickly. Geli adds that if you water your plants with the wrong water, they die quite quickly — and the same could happen here.

This is the couple’s third legal victory. In 2016 they won a public inquiry that demonstrated too much groundwater was being taken from the valley by water companies and local farmers, causing the fen to dry out. Their second win, in 2022, forced the Environment Agency to limit water abstraction near other nature-rich sites on the Norfolk Broads.

Natural England said it accepted the court’s verdict that it had not done enough to protect Catfield Fen, but would not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

Their principles have also cost them local friendships. The couple say National Farmers’ Union representatives rejected their application to join the local branch, because many farmers are upset at restrictions on abstracting water to boost lucrative crops such as potatoes. We are farmers, Tim says; we are not anti-farmer.

Since their 2022 victory, they have noticed an improvement in water levels and biodiversity in the fen’s dykes. Geli says they are a Noah’s ark until things get better and nature can spread outwards again. But they are not confident nature is winning; this summer, Tim says, experts surveying the site found insect numbers heading down.

The judge is to make further rulings on what Natural England must do to stop the pollution of Catfield Fen. For the Harrises, the answer is simple: arable farmers must be paid to put in buffer strips of grassland between their ploughed fields and the ditches leading to the Broads, to reduce nitrate-filled soil washing into the fen. More widely, Tim argues, regulators must put their resources into monitoring and compliance.

Tim, who is 79, says he does not want any of this campaigning; he wants to read books. He believes the Broads Authority should be leading the fight against pollution. Nevertheless, the couple are considering another legal challenge to stop the Broads being polluted. Their stewardship will continue after them — their daughter, a lawyer by training, will take on the farm, and their granddaughter is a lawyer too. Their advice is simple: you need enormous persistence, and you need passion, because evil can happen when people do nothing.