Following the Prime Minister’s speech today at the NFU AGM, DEFRA has published these two overviews of its schemes: the range of financial assistance schemes – see this link the Farming Investment Fund for productivity The Prime Minister's announcements are summarised in our note....
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 15th February 2024 DEFRA’s Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is the element of England’s new regime that sits best with commercial farming. There are some non-production options but, generally, the actions offered can readily fit with or alongside commercial farming. Actions available or becoming available include improving soils, helping the adoption of precision farming and multi-species pastures with their benefits...
The Forestry Commission are running a free event on 22nd March 2024 to provide an introduction to woodland creation opportunities, funding and support. The event will take place at the Holiday Inn, Scotch Corner, DL10 6NR. More detail and booking is available here: Woods Mean Business: tree and woodland event for land and forestry agents Tickets, Fri 22 Mar 2024 at 09:30 | Eventbrite....
The Welsh Government has published a written statement on Riparian Ownership: Maintaining Watercourses, highlighting guidance document produced by NRW which explains to landowners how riparian ownership works, and how it might affect them.
From today (12 February), all new major housing developments in England are required to deliver at least a 10% Biodiversity Net Gain. A collection of related CAAV resources and external guidance is available on our website here: BNG - CAAV Collected Guidance - Version 1 - The Central Association for Agricultural Valuers.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 8th February 2024 It started in Holland but has now spread to most EU countries in the mainland of Europe, from Spain to Poland as farmers bring their tractors to town make their points. Each country’s protests though follow its national agenda, perhaps only unified by the EU’s pernickety farm-level auditing of the CAP and the growing force of the EU Green Deal. With a wider background of western malaise and ahead of...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 1st February 2024 Many very large things are being asked of us and our land. We are being asked to answer climate change and adapt to increasingly volatile weather, reducing emissions, sequestering carbon and managing water, improving nature and eco-systems, providing housing and other development including infrastructure – and still provide food. All that is to come from the finite area of our islands at a time of growing...
The Bank of England has held its base rate at 5.25% with the Governor noting that geopolitical risks had intensified. Six members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted for a standstill, two for an increase and one for a cut.
On their blog, the RPA has reminded BPS claimants of the new deadlines for payment queries and appeals. The 60 day deadline starts on the ‘date of notification’. This is the date the RPA emails or writes to a claimant, giving notification of a payment decision. This can be:a payment remittancea payment querya response to a payment query, when the original payment query was received by the RPA within 60 days of sending a payment remittanceFor any BPS payment decisions notified before 1...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 25th January 2024 It can be worth remembering in today’s rapidly changing circumstances and new environmental offers that, where law or taxation make special provisions for farming, their benefit can be limited to where farming is being done. They are not entitlements, but conditional. Where agricultural activity ceases, the benefit of those special provisions can be lost. The provisions are to assist those who are farmers,...
Applications have now opened for the 2nd round of the Improving Farm Productivity Grant. For more detail on the grant, see our website note of 14th December. Since the initial publication of the scheme guidance, DEFRA has increased the proportion of the costs that the grant will cover from 40% to 50% for robotic and automated equipment....
Two major energy projects have reached milestones in their consenting. Sizewell C has announced that it has satisfied the commitments made in its Deed of Obligation. These were preliminary tasks required under the Development Consent Order (DCO) and preconditions for the start of the formal construction phase. The start of construction is not conditional on the final investment decision (FID) which is expected to be taken later in 2024. The Drax Bioenergy carbon capture and storage project was...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 18th January 2024 The encouragement of private capital with and alongside public money has been a recurrent theme in government statements on environmental policy. DEFRA has set out very round figures as targets for this, calling for £500 million of private investment in “nature recovery” by 2027 and £1 billion by 2030 (perhaps 40 per cent of England’s legacy CAP money but not all necessarily agricultural or even...
DEFRA has confirmed the start dates for biodiversity net gain in England:From 12 February 2024, BNG will be mandatory for new planning applications for major development made under the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) 1990, subject to the confirmed exemptions.BNG for small sites will have an extended transition period and will apply from 2 April 2024....
Following the start-of-the-year announcement by the DEFRA Secretary on schemes and coming farming policy, DEFRA is hosting several webinars to brief advisers and farmers. The Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP) will be holding an adviser specific webinar on Monday 22nd January: Advisor Webinar - the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI24) Tickets, Mon 22 Jan 2024 at 15:00 | Eventbrite. DEFRA are hosting a webinar on 26th January. Janet Hughes and others from the RPA will be providing an...
Round 2 of the Slurry Infrastructure grant will close for applications on Wednesday 17th January. In addition to the scheme guidance, DEFRA has posted a blog item providing a recap of the grant and the information needed to get started.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 11th January 2024 Recent weeks have seen a mood that interest rates may be on the way down. However, UK 10 year gilts are nudging back up to 4 per cent and there seems reason for rates to remain higher for longer and also be more volatile. The strange period was the 15 years of unprecedented ultra-low interest rates from 2008 to 2023, not the last few months in which we have returned to a world of significant interest rates....
DAERA has announced that the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) is providing free, face-to-face Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) training sessions for farmers in the County Down area.
Scottish Government has made an announcement on the Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme (SSBSS) 2024, the application window is now open, and will close on Tuesday 31st December 2024.
Defra has reviewed and updated Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payment rates based on current costs. Where the 2024 rate has increased, the higher payment rate will be paid for: existing SFI Pilot and 2023 agreements, backdated to the start of their current agreement year.new applications received in 2024 SFI 22 payment rates are not changing as the scheme is closing....
The Scottish Government has launched a consultation with a view to updating the legislation on the management of wild deer. The consultation follows the report of the Deer Working Group in 2020. The proposed legislative changes seek to improve deer management taking into consideration climate change and biodiversity. Changes to legislation that were made in 2023 include to remove the close season for all male deer, to enable the wider use of non-toxic ammunition and to facilitate night...
Robbie Moore, Floods Minister, has made a statement in the Commons on the renewed flooding in England following Storm Henk, noting that: “Parts of the country had a month’s worth of rain in the first four days of January, and that rain fell on already saturated ground. Several of our biggest river systems—the Trent, Thames, Severn and Avon—saw record levels, or close to record levels …” He stressed the protection given by recent flood defence works and the 2022 planning guidance...
As a striking achievement, the United Kingdom is now about halfway to its net zero target for 2050, the first G7 country to do so. With the lags in producing statistics, the headline territorial measure for UK-produced greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 has now been reported at 51 per cent of their level in 1990, lower than before the pandemic and expected to have fallen further in 2023. With much of this achieved by increased renewable energy reducing the share of fossil fuel in electricity...
Andrew Liddiment of near Leominster, Herefordshire referred himself to the CAAV’s disciplinary processes following a criminal conviction for sexual assault. The CAAV Executive, sitting as a Disciplinary Panel, reviewed all papers submitted and, as authorised for such a case under the Bylaws, determined that the seriousness of the matter for the reputation of a Fellow and of the Association warranted his expulsion from membership of the Association with immediate effect from 19th...
The end of year closure of the SFI Application Portal meant that all applications that had been started but not submitted by then are treated as withdrawn. The Application Portal has now re-opened. We understand that a number of applications have already been started using re-opened Portal and a small number of applications have now been submitted. This is seen to suggest that the system is again functional.
The CAAV office will close for Christmas at 1 p.m. on Friday 22nd December 2023 and re-open on Tuesday 2nd January 2024. May we take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 21st December 2023 With the winter solstice in the dark of early tomorrow morning, the year turns to bring 2023 to an end and open 2024 and all it might offer. The great feasts of lights, Jewish Hannukah followed by Christmas, shine out in the mid-winter, lights against the dark. From this autumn’s grey and rain sodden farmland of Britain to the grim war-fronts of south and east Ukraine, this matters for the hope and...
As Members will be aware, BPS ends on 31st December 2023, succeeded by delinked payments managing the run-off funds of the scheme. For more background to the scheme, see our recent Podcast). Over the past month, farm businesses have received an Information Statement, setting out the basis on which their delinked payments would be calculated. A business’ reference data – the gross payment received across 2020, 2021 and 2022 – will be able to be transferred to another party in early 2024....
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 14th December 2023 Forget England’s Agricultural Transition and the coming end of Basic Payment in the other parts of the United Kingdom. While those dominate conversation and thinking, the most striking policy change for much rural land across the UK goes far beyond where the environmental parts of the new policies might seem to go. The international “30by30” commitment means that 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of...
The RPA has published guidance on the second round of the Improving Farm Productivity grant. Budgets of £15 million for each have been allocated for solar equipment and for automation and robotics. Grants of between £15,000 and £100,000 will be available for farmers to fund a range of solar equipment, at an intervention rate of 25%. The grant will therefore be able to fund solar projects which have a total cost of between £60,000 and £400,000. For robotic and automated equipment, grants of...
The Forestry Commission has updated the grant manual for the England Woodland Creation Offer, providing more detail for when applicants can move land from Countryside Stewardship into the EWCO scheme. See section 3.3.2 here: England Woodland Creation Offer application form - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
At the end of December, the RPA will be closing the SFI application portal, to allow for annual updates to be undertaken. Any unsubmitted SFI applications will need to be restarted when the system re-opens in January. The key points are: SFI 2023 applications should be submitted by 31 December In order for applicants to apply in 2024, RPA will close the service for new applications for a few days, between 27 December and 1 January Customers with an SFI application they have started but...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 7th December 2023 The area-based Basic Payment Scheme ends this month for England. The RPA has just made the overwhelming majority of the second balancing payments for 2023, so that English farmers have now had almost two thirds of the direct payments possible under the Agricultural Transition. The statutory instrument revoking the Scheme and ending cross compliance has been published together with another one setting 60 day...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 30th November 2023 While having more Fellows and Probationers than ever, the CAAV is conscious that rural practices feel an acute shortage of staff for the growing range and volume of work coming in. With work growing faster than we are, this feels more than the general shortage of staff in the wider economy. The CAAV has been tackling this with a round of meetings with some employers and the universities to see how we can...
The Government has published a range of documents in preparation for the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain in England in January 2024: Draft statutory instruments, amending existing legislation and making provision for the Biodiversity Gain Site Register, excepted sites and irreplaceable habitatsUpdate guidance for BNG, collected here: Biodiversity net gain - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)A revised Biodiversity MetricDraft planning practice guidance on BNG We will follow the announcements with a...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 23rd November 2023 The let sector covers a third of England’s farmland, still with many 1986 Act tenancies but more than half on FBTs, and still large areas of Wales and Scotland. In addition to that scale, it provides a critical means of flexibility in farm structures, entry, expansion and exit from farming, relieving owners of the need to farm and enabling farmers to have the use of land without having to buy it. Its...
On Tuesday night Jeremy Moody was formally bestowed Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), its highest honour, in a ceremony at the RAU attended by Chair of the Governing Council, Dame Fiona Reynolds, as well as the Vice Chancellor, Earl Bathurst as Vice President and many of the senior leadership team at the RAU. Jeremy Moody was commended to the meeting by William Leschallas. The event was also attended by friends, family and alumni – including the current CAAV...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 16th November 2023 At least the UK does not have volcanoes. Iceland, a land still being forged in fire, is watching in awe at the risk of an eruption 25 miles from its capital, evacuating a town before its destruction. In Europe’s other volcanic area, the Phlegraean Fields near Naples and Vesuvius have just had a 4.2 earthquake. Here, we are only following Iceland in the more benign search for geothermal energy prospects in...
DEFRA is holding two upcoming SFI Webinars:20th November, for Livestock and Grassland Farmers4th December, for Arable and Horticultural Farmers...
Steve Barclay, MP for North East Cambridgeshire and formerly the Health Secretary, has been appointed Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
During the Reshuffle of 13th November, Thérèse Coffey has resigned as Environment Secretary. More updates to come on the replacement for her role and other relevant Government positions, as details are know.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 9th November 2023 Speaking to the North East Chamber of Commerce, Keir Starmer returned strongly to his party conference theme of the vigour that a Labour Government would bring to secure new housing and infrastructure as part of encouraging economic growth (see webnote). It chimes quite closely with the legislation that the Conservative Government is putting in place and, even while repeating the intention to “bulldoze”...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 2nd November 2023 The variability of British weather has long been a topic of conversation but our extreme weather events now come “not single spies but in battalions”. Hundreds of acres of Lincolnshire farmland are still flooded and Angus had at least 11½” of rain in October, the wettest since its records started in 1891. As rain falls on saturated land, we see surface water flooding as well as river flooding –...
The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act received Royal Assent on the 26th of October. It would ordinarily take effect 2 months later, though most items will take much more work and will not commence for some time. The CAAV will brief members on the ongoing impacts of the Act.
Farming Connect Wales is offering fully funded workshops looking at improving herd and flock health, performance and productivity. These workshops are to support farmers in preparing for the coming Sustainable Farming Scheme and in working toward the net zero target. More detail is available online....
The RPA have informed use that they have identified an issue with the Rural Payments Service (RPS). In order to investigate the problem, they have taken the RPS offline. We will update members when more is known about restoring the service. Update: 2nd November, 3:45pm - The RPS is now back online.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 26th October 2023 It is only October and we already have our second “named” storm. Storm Babet has repeatedly battered and saturated Angus, Aberdeenshire and neighbouring counties with still more rain falling after silage bales had been washed out to sea. Flooding has gone wider, whether Framlingham, Derby, Retford, parts of the Welsh border and now the central south coast. This is the present taste of the more volatile,...
The government has announced that the Energy Act 2023 has received Royal Assent, the final version is now available. Since the Bill entered the Commons it has undergone several amendments.
The Government has announced that the closing date for new applications to the Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS) is to be extended to 31st March 2028. The extension is in response to difficulties experienced by project sponsors in commissioning anaerobic digestion plant and in securing feedstock. The extension is part of the Government's response to the mid-scheme review. Further details of the response will follow in due course. The policy framework for biomethane following the closure of the...
Applications open on the 23th October for the Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund 2024. More information is available here: Facilitation Fund 2024: Countryside Stewardship - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 19th October 2023 For at least 30 years, the rural rumour mill over the future of APR periodically goes into overdrive. The chatter then reverberates as others pick it up and repeat the echoes, making the speculation appear real – all told, a masochistic part of rural debate. We seem to be on the edge of one such moment as people try to join up the few dots about future Labour tax policies in this area. Use of APR was on...
With Storm Babet passing through the UK, the RPA has published guidance for scheme holders affected by severe weather events. The guidance is available here: Extreme weather guidance for farmers and land managers - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Members will be aware of the recent requirement to submit an Expression of Interest ahead of applying for the Sustainable Farming Incentive in England. That requirement is to be lifted this week, and applications invited through the Rural Payments Service. Those farming on commons, however, should continue to express their interest with the Rural Payments Agency.
Natural England and DEFRA are carrying out user research in the Magic Map application. They are looking for feedback on the service from users and non-users alike. The short survey can be found here. Update: 18th October A common issue identified by users of the Magic Map is the printing of maps from the application. This is a known problem for the Chrome and Edge browsers (which has been on-running since at least August last year). Using Firefox or Internet Explorer may enable maps...
BASIS, the agricultural and environmental qualifying and training body, has developed a register for environmental advisers. With the growing focus on environmental delivery through Government schemes and private initiatives, the intention is to provide an industry platform for those who plan to offer farm environmental advice to businesses in the UK. More detail on the register can be found here: BASIS | Environmental Advisers Register (basis-reg.co.uk). In the future, entry to the register...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 12th October 2023 This week’s Labour Party Conference has brought its pro-development policies to the fore, driven by answering the housing shortage. Keir Starmer has crystallised the policy with his phrase about “bulldozing” an over-localised planning system. He has been supported in this by both Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, and Angela Rayner, deputy leader, carrying forward the work done by Lisa Nandy, her...
DEFRA have published a new website for collected information and guidance about the Sustainable Farming Scheme. The Farming for the Future site can be found here: Sustainable Farming Incentive - Farming for the future.
The RPA has published a webpage dedicated to listing periods when the Rural Payments Service (RPS) will be offline for updates and maintenance. The page is available here: Rural Payments service: check for maintenance and downtime - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Members who use the RPS frequently can sign up for email updates by clicking this button on the relevant webpage:...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 5th October 2023 HS2 has now been identified as the cuckoo in the nest with its ever-escalating costs and extending timescales, seen as an unmanageable project with its benefits now less than its vast and perhaps unquantifiable costs. It had grown to take a third of the Department for Transport’s capital budget, more money than either Highways England’s roads renewals programme or Network Rail’s capital programme. With...
DEFRA, with the English Organic Forum, is holding a webinar on SFI and organic on Friday 13th October at 12-1.15pm. Please see this Eventbrite link for registering.