GovWire

At the end of July,the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) published guidance giving extreme heat advice for farmers and land managers, who were facing difficulties meeting requirements for rural grant and payment schemes due to the hot and dry weather.

Since then, Defra has approved temporary requirement adjustments to some Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES)options due to the extreme challenges that farmers are facing this year. The options with temporary adjustments document lists these options.

As an agreement holder, you can choose to either continue with your existing options without adjustment or use the options with adjustments.

What the adjustments mean for agreement holders

Due to this years drought conditions, adjustments have been introduced, such as cutting or grazing additional areas of land, to help ease shortages of bedding, fodder, grazing or forage crops. This is mainly for your own use and to share with the wider community, but should not be for profit.

You must still meet with regulatory and cross compliance requirements, and consider soil conditions (poaching, compaction, run-off), particularly on land which is grazed or used by machinery.

Temporary adjustments will not affect any payments you receive under your agri-environment scheme agreement.

What you need to do

Fill in the temporary requirement adjustments form. You must keep this form for your records as this may be requested in the future. You do not need to return it to RPA.

Use a separate form for each agreement.

What records you need to keep

You will need to keep the following records and produce them, if you are asked to do so:

• field operations at the parcel level, including associated invoices
• stock records to show grazing activity on parcels