£15 million on offer as Landscape Recovery second funding round launched
A fresh round of funding is now available to farmers and landowners for projects to create new wildlife habitats, help protected sites and help the UK reach net zero, alongside sustainable food production, the Government announced today (18 May).
Building on the first round of the Landscape Recovery scheme launched last year, farmers and land managers can apply for a share of £15 million initial development funding, with more investment in the years promised as projects are delivered.
The Government's aim is to encourage farmers to work in partnership to protect and enhance landscapes in England, delivering environmental large-scale benefits while supporting sustainable food production.
Find out more about the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) Farming and Countryside Programme.
More funding
The second round of the scheme will support up to 25 projects, overseen by Natural England and the Environment Agency. The projects will be selected based on their environmental and social impact, value for money and suitability for the scheme.
It will focus on projects of at least 500 hectares, which could include landscape scale projects creating and enhancing woodland including temperate rainforest, peatland, nature reserves and protected sites such as ancient woodlands, wetlands and salt marshes.
BPS wind down
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) plans to replace the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in England with delinked payments in 2024, making the 2023 scheme the last year of BPS.
The RPA plans to make delinked payments each year from 2024 to 2027 and the amount farmers receive will decrease each year as progressive reductions are applied.
Guidance about delinked payments has been updated and explains who is eligible for the payments and how they’re calculated. To view the guidance, go to the GOV.UK website.
Authors
Andrew Pearson
Oli Hill
As Head of Communications, Oli creates and oversees the content published on AIC's website, emails, Member briefings, print publications, and social media. A qualified multimedia journalist, he previously spent six years working at Farmers Weekly magazine as a Senior Reporter on the arable team, and latterly as Community Editor. More recently he was Communications Manager at Red Tractor.
