GovWire

The Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme (NCPGS) provides funding to restore peatlands in the uplands and lowlands of England. It is a competitive grant scheme that will run until 2025.

The scheme is open to:

• environmental groups
• local authorities
• charities
• public bodies
• individual landowners
• organisations

Application criteria

Natural England is looking for landscape scale applications that work to restore the whole hydrological unit of a peatland. This is likely to involve a number of sites and landowners, so applications from partnerships or substantial land holdings are encouraged.

Applicants must have the authority to carry out the activities in their proposal. For example, if you do not own the land, you need permission from the landowner as part of your application.

You cannot apply for funding for activities that have already been funded through other sources.

Objectives of the scheme

You must be able to show in your application how your proposal will deliver the schemes objectives.

The objectives are to:

• reduce emissions from peat by 5.7 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents cumulatively by 2050
• establish the process of restoring 35,000 hectares of degraded peat in England by March 2025
• provide wider benefits such as improved ecosystems and biodiversity, better water quality, natural flood management, protection of historic environment features, and connecting people with nature

Restoration Grant

Restoration Grants fund landscape scale restoration work on degraded peatlands in England. You can apply for the third round of grants in early April 2023.

You can normally apply for up to 75% of the total project costs. In exceptional cases, you can apply for up to 85% of the cost. A project is an exceptional case if its both:

• offering unique and significant environmental benefits that commonly-used restoration techniques could not achieve for example, innovative techniques to reintroduce rare species
• from organisations or partnerships with constraints over their ability to secure other funding

These projects still need to score highly against all assessment criteria.

All Restoration Grant applicants must match at least 15% of the project funding from a non-exchequer source (not from the government or HM Treasury).

Discovery Grant

You cannot apply for Discovery Grants anymore.

You can still apply for a Restoration Grant if youve received a Discovery Grant in the past.

Other land management schemes

Having a NCPGS grant will not affect your eligibility for current and future land management schemes like the Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery schemes.

You cannot receive payments for the same work through both the NCPGS and land management payments.

Details about the Peatland Grant Scheme

You can read more information about round 3 of the scheme on Contracts Finder. This includes a detailed draft document about the scheme.

There will be 2 webinars in March 2023 to give further information about the scheme. If you would like to attend, email peatlandscheme@naturalengland.org.uk.

How to apply

You can apply for a Restoration Grant in round 3 from early April 2023.

Information on how to apply will be added to this page before the applications open.

Contact Natural England

If you have questions about the Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme, you can contact Natural England by email peatlandscheme@naturalengland.org.uk.