Natural England to appeal gamebird release licensing ruling

Natural England has announced it intends to appeal the High Court judgment that found it acted unlawfully in its approach to gamebird release licensing on and around protected sites. The regulator set out its position in a statement on its official blog on Friday evening, the day after Mr Justice Ritchie handed down his ruling in the judicial review brought by BASC.

What has Natural England said?

In the statement, published on the Natural England blog at naturalengland.blog.gov.uk, the regulator said it “respectfully disagrees with the judgment and intends to appeal the decision on a number of points of law”.

“Protecting England’s internationally important wildlife sites and the species they support remains at the heart of our work,” it said, “and we will continue to use every appropriate legal mechanism available to fulfil that responsibility.”

Natural England maintains that the disputed licence conditions were imposed to protect birds on special protection areas (SPAs) from avian influenza. It says the licensing regime, introduced in 2021, affects fewer than 1% of shoots in England, applying only where pheasants or red-legged partridges are released on, or within 500 metres of, a designated European site.

What did the High Court decide?

Mr Justice Ritchie’s 47-page judgment, handed down on 16 July, found that Natural England acted beyond its powers by imposing conditions that prevented shoots from keeping pheasants and partridges in release pens within SPAs and their 500-metre buffer zones before the start of the shooting season.

The court rejected BASC’s separate challenge to Natural England’s guidance that a licence is required where a release pen straddles the boundary of a controlled zone. The case was heard on 1 and 2 July, following a judicial review claim BASC brought in September 2025. ShootingUK’s full report of the ruling is in the related articles below.

How has BASC responded?

BASC chief executive Ian Bell set out why the association went to court in an article published on Friday evening, headed “Public bodies are not above the law”, at basc.org.uk. “Nobody wants to take their regulator to court,” he wrote. “Judicial review is slow, expensive and adversarial, and it is always the last resort.”

Before issuing proceedings, he said, BASC met Natural England’s leadership and set out where it believed the regulator had gone beyond the law: “We asked it to put things right. We were ignored. The countryside needs a regulator that functions and that it can trust,” Mr Bell added. “Our door remains open, as it was before we issued proceedings.”

A BASC spokesperson added “The High Court found that Natural England acted beyond its powers – ‘irrational’ was the judge’s word, not ours.

“Natural England is entitled to seek permission to appeal, and BASC will meet it in court, just as we did the first time. But it cannot wish away the judgment. The court has been clear, and its finding – that a regulator must act within the powers Parliament gave it – is not in doubt.”

What happens next?

Natural England must be granted permission before any appeal can proceed, and no hearing date has been set. The judgment has not yet been published on the National Archives’ Find Case Law service, so it does not yet have a neutral citation.

Natural England’s full statement is on its blog at naturalengland.blog.gov.uk and Ian Bell’s article is at basc.org.uk. ShootingUK will report each development as the case progresses, including any decision on permission to appeal.