Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to introduce a national monitoring system to track agricultural land being developed for ground mounted solar.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As the Prime Minister said at PMQs last week, we must protect our nation’s food security and therefore our most valuable agricultural land.
As per planning policy, local planning authorities should consider all the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land, when making plans or taking decisions on new development proposals. Where significant development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, planning authorities should seek to use poorer quality land in preference to that of a higher quality. Planning Practice Guidance also sets out a preference for the use of lower quality agricultural land.
I agree that monitoring of the impacts of solar on agricultural land is important and am in discussions with my counterparts in DLUHC and DESNZ.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when the new land use framework will be published.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
As stated in Government’s response to the House of Lords Land Use Committee’s report ‘Making the most out of England’s land’, we are currently preparing a Land Use Framework for England. We announced in the Food Strategy that we would publish the Framework in 2023.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to support farmers in the context of increases in the cost of fuel, fertiliser and feed.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
We are very aware of the significant turbulence in international commodity markets following Russian’s invasion of Ukraine and are closely monitoring the market situation.
Agricultural commodity prices have always been strongly correlated to the price of energy. Farmers face the challenge of rising inputs costs, particularly fertiliser costs, due to the sharp increase in the price of gas. The solution will require us to pioneer new technologies to manufacture more organic based fertiliser products, and to rediscover more older, more established techniques such as using nitrogen fixing legumes and clovers as an alternative to fertiliser.
We are also seeing high costs for inputs including red diesel and animal feed. We are working with the industry to identify where mitigations are available and continue to keep the situation under review.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason landowners and farmers are no longer compensated for allowing permissive access to their land under the sustainable farming initiative; and whether he has plans to offer payments under a different initiative.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, the Government is a great supporter of the health and wellbeing benefits that access to the countryside can bring.
Support for increasing access into the countryside will be made through existing schemes and support mechanisms already in place, such as Countryside Stewardship which saw a 40% increase in uptake last year. We are still considering our approach to support for increasing and maintaining access to the countryside in our future schemes, including our environmental land management schemes.
To boost investment in the meantime, we have launched a new Farming in Protected Landscapes programme in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - this includes funding for farmers and land managers to provide more opportunities for people to explore, enjoy and understand the countryside.
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many of his Department's offices and offices of related agencies are located outside of London; and how many and what proportion of those are located in settlements that are classified as (a) D1, (b) D2, (c) E1, (d) E2, (f) F1 and (g) F2 according to the Rural Urban Classification system.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The number of offices located outside London is 126.
The proportion of those located in settlements D1, D2, E1, E2, F1 and F2 are as follows:
Classification | % |
D1 | 5.6% |
D2 | 2.4% |
E1 | 7.1% |
E2 | 0.0% |
F1 | 6.3% |
F2 | 0.0% |
Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what internal criteria his Department is using to assess locations for relocations of his Department under the Places for Growth programme.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government has committed to ensuring that the administration of Government is less London-centric through the relocation of 22,000 civil service roles to locations across the United Kingdom.
Defra is taking into account a range of factors including our operating model, workforce and location analysis to assess possible locations for our roles. The department will select places that we judge to have the skills, transport links and capacity to meet our needs and flourish in our chosen locations as well as ensuring locations are suitable for the long term success and sustainability of the civil service.
Relocations under Places for Growth represent better value for money due to the lower costs of estates and salaries outside of London. The majority of moves will involve roles becoming available through natural turnover or churn rather than moving people.