GovWire

About Countryside Stewardship

Countryside Stewardship (CS) provides financial incentives for farmers, foresters and land managers to look after and improve the environment.

CS protects and enhances the natural environment by:

• increasing biodiversity
• improving habitat
• expanding woodland areas
• improving water quality
• improving air quality
• improving natural flood management

CS supports Defras 25 Year Environment Plan for our country to be the healthiest, most beautiful place in the world to live, work and bring up a family. It also supports Defras strategic objective of a cleaner, healthier environment, benefitting people and the economy.

Grants for 2024

CS grants are closed. To apply for capital items, go to Capital items: guidance for applicants and agreement holders.

Existing agreement holders guidance

Existing CS agreement holders should follow the relevant scheme guidance to manage their agreement effectively and meet all its requirements.

How to make a claim for payment

CS agreement holders should follow the guidance on how to make a capital or revenue claim to get paid under the terms of their CS agreement.

Revenue payment rates from January 2024

Defra has reviewed and updatedCSpayment rates based on current costs. See the rate changes for CSrevenue options.

Land use codes 2024

See the land use codesyou should use in your application.

How HMRC treats subsidy payments

Your grant and subsidy payments are paid before tax is taken off. You may need to tell HMRC about these if you or your business pay UK tax. For more information, read HMRCs Business Income Manual BIM40451 - Specific receipts: grants and subsidies. If you have an accountant, you should also discuss this with them.

How Countryside Stewardship fits in with the Agricultural Transition

CS continues to offer Mid Tier and Higher Tier agreements starting in 2024, alongside rolling out further elements of our new scheme, the Sustainable Farm Incentive (SFI). Several SFI standards are already available, with more due to be introduced in future.

Signing up to a CS agreement now will put you in the best possible position to join future schemes. It will also give you a viable, long-term source of income for providing environmental benefits as the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments are reduced.

All new CS agreement holders will be able to terminate the agreement early without penalty (at agreed points) provided any new agreement delivers equivalent or greater levels of environmental outcomes.

SFI 2022 and 2023

Anyone with a CS agreement will be able to apply for SFI actions so long as we are not paying for the same action twice. Find out how the SFI interacts with other schemes.

CS and SFI pilot scheme

The SFI pilot is currently running alongside SFI. Applications for the pilot are closed.

Land parcels already in anSFIpilot agreement are not eligible forCSMid Tier, including the Wildlife Offers. SFI pilot agreement holders can access one-off payments to buy equipment or other capital items from existing offers, such as Countryside Stewardship capital grants and the Farming Investment Fund.

Local Nature Recovery

We will develop an enhanced version of CS for future years, so we achieve the same ambitious outcomes that we intended to deliver through Local Nature Recovery, rather than building a whole new scheme. We will publish more information about the scheme, including how CS agreement holders can take part, later this year.

Landscape Recovery

Customers with a CS Mid Tier or Wildlife Offer agreement can also apply for a Landscape Recovery agreement. Defra will work with Landscape Recovery applicants during the project development phase on how to transition CS Mid Tier (including Wildlife Offers) agreement holders fully into Landscape Recovery and avoid double funding. Our first round of projects have recently entered the development phase.

Register yourself and your land

Before you apply for a CS grant, you need to register on the Rural Payments service. Follow the guidance on how to register and check your details.

For help, telephone RPA on 03000 200 301.

Authorise an agent

You can authorise an agent to fill in and submit your application for you. This also applies to payment claim forms for agreement holders.

For an agent to act for you, you must give them the appropriate permission levels in the Rural Payments service. This applies even if you have previously authorised the agent using the paper agent authorisation form.

Read the guidance on how to give someone else permission to act on your behalf for more information on the different levels of permission. You should also read the information on the Permission levels screen in the Rural Payments service. This lists what is permitted at each level.

You are responsible for making sure that you assign permissions on the Rural Payments service correctly and that contact details are correct.

How to check and update your maps when applying for Countryside Stewardship

Use the mapping guidance to check all land parcels you intend to include on your CS application on your digital maps.

Site visits

Under a CS agreement, you will get a site visit. Site visits will assess how the environmental aims are met under the options you have in your agreement. We will also check that you have not car

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