Environmental Land Management Schemes
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason Sustainable Farming Incentive and Environmental Land Management scheme payments have been delayed.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
The Sustainable Farming Incentive Scheme has a rolling application window, and quarterly payments begin four months after the start of an accepted agreement. As of 04 February, the Rural Payments Agency has 35,949 accepted agreement offers for which a payment is due with around 98% having received their quarterly payments.
The Countryside Stewardship payment window runs from 1 December 2024 to 30 June 2025. Rural Payments Agency received 35,596 claims and as of 04 February 2025, payments have been released for 25,540 (74%) of these.
The Environmental Stewardship payment window runs from 1 December 2024 to 30 June 2025. Rural Payments Agency received 5,950 claims and as of 04 February 2025, payments have been released for 5,559 (93%) of these.
The Get Funding to Improve Animal Health and Welfare Review scheme has a rolling application window and as of 04 February the RPA has received 8,992 claims, of which 8,079 claims were accepted and 80.2% paid.
RPA received 125% more Countryside Stewardship revenue claims in 2024 than in 2020. Recognising payments are made between December and the following June, as at end of December 2024 we’d made 22,000 payments (worth over £278.5m) which is 11,900 more payments (worth £214m more) than we had by end of December 2020.
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