When is a silage clamp exempt from SSAFO?
The agricultural community are, generally, a law abiding bunch of people. Despite national stereotypes, I think this holds true for most of Europe. There might be some subtle difference between how the Swiss and Germans follow the rules when compared to the more hot blooded Mediterranean neighbours but none of us live in chaos. But despite this gentle compliance, I think it’s also fair to say that none of us really like being told what to do. And this certainly holds true for farmers being told what to do with their farms.
When did the SSAFO regulations come into force?
In the UK sometime during 1991 there was an earthquake in the storage of silage, and all of a sudden farmers were being told what, where and how to store their silage. This was the year when the regulations changed and the line in the sand was drawn. Since then 1991 has gone down in the UK as the base year, ground zero if you like. In reality, it wasn’t quite like that because the laws designed to protect our natural watercourses date back far earlier than 1991; but as far as your silage is concerned, 1991 was when it all changed.
Is your silage clamp SSAFO exempt?
The actual Silage, Slurry and Fuel Oil Regulations didn’t get tagged as SSAFO Regs until 2015 but the Control of Pollution (Silage, Slurry and Fuel Oil) Regulations preceeded this from March 1991. Now this stuff might interest someone studying for a degree in legal history but what does this mean to you?
Do the SSAFO regulations apply to your silage clamp?
Some bright spark (probably) in Whitehall realised that you can’t just change the rules and expect everything to change overnight. So they decided that although the rules came into statute in March 1991, only clamps completed after 1st September 1991 would need to be SSAFO compliant. This gave builders 6 months to throw a clamp together before they had to properly construct it.
This rule also allowed for existing clamps to also remain exempt from the SSAFO Regs. Financially this was welcomed by farmers because the costs of retro fitting a silage clamp to make it compliant could be ruinous. And so it goes on, exempt silage clamps do not need to be SSAFO compliant as long as they were completed before 1st September 1991 - but just how long can you continue to use them?
When does an exempt clamp become a non compliant clamp?
The rule makers realised that these “old” clamps couldn’t go on forever so they included a clause that says a clamp is no longer exempt if it is ever “substantially extended, enlarged or re-built”. In this case not only must the new work be compliant, but so too must all the existing parts of the clamp.
Faced with this limitation, many people built new clamps next door to the old clamp rather than extend the old one - because it was a much easier and cheaper option. This has given us to have a countryside littered with knackered old clamps that no one dares to touch for fear of landing themselves in the brown stuff.
An old timber silage clamp
What’s wrong with old silage clamps?
This is a very reasonable question to ask, but it’s one I’m not going to answer directly. This is down to the legal stuff again, not the concrete and steel of a silage clamp, because there is a key difference between a legal regulation, and a law. Your old silage clamp might comply with the regulations but if it leaks, you will have broken a law - and likely be prosecuted under the Water Resources Act 1991. So it’s more about the risk of pollution rather than the compliance of a structure.
So is it still safe to use a non compliant silage clamp?
In theory and practice it’s entirely possible to continue using a non compliant silage clamp; but I would still advise you to think very carefully about this. You see, however well the clamp has been maintained and looked after, even the youngest of exempt silage clamps was constructed over 34 years ago at the time of writing this. At the time it was constructed the clamp would probably have been built to British Standard 5502 standards which had a 20 year design life for silage clamps. So any exempt clamp has, probably, already served 1.7 times it’s expected life sentence.
So maybe it is time to pension off the exempt silage clamp
If you are thinking this, you are not alone because it would appear that more and more of the rule makers are looking at this issue with increasing interest too. It seems that some people within the Environment Agency are thinking along the same lines because, anecdotally there has been an increasing number of improvement notices issued to farmers about their silage clamps.
Is it time to update your silage clamp?
It also seems that the rules might be changing too. In England the last significant update of the SSAFO Regs was in 2023 but this only referred to the slurry storage requirements. It is no secret that the silage storage elements are now under review and I think there might be some substantial changes to the rules coming sometime soon.
Should I plan for a new silage clamp now?
Given all I have said above, I would say “yes” to the “plan” part of that question right now. I think it is sensible and prudent to look at your existing storage facilities and give an honest judgement as to if they are compliant or not. And if you don’t feel qualified to do this, ask a helpful silage consultant to do it for you.
As to the question of what you do with this information, this is obviously much more complicated. If some, or all of your silage storage is non compliant, you are going to have to do something about that at some point. The longer you leave it, the higher the chance that there could be a pollution incident and a prosecution. If you delay there is also a chance that the “new” SSAFO rules could be more stringent than the old, but this is only a chance, we don’t know this for now. Ultimately this decision is about staying on the right side of the law whatever the regulations may say.
If you want to discuss your existing silage clamps or would like to discuss any other aspects covered in this series, contact me at jeremy@silageconsultant.co.uk