Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to publish proposals on replacing the current scheme for payments to commoners for the number of livestock that they release on to the New Forest.

Payments to commoners for the number of livestock that they release on to the New Forest are currently made through Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Environmental Stewardship agreements. The main New Forest HLS agreement has been recommended for a one-year extension, as have other expiring New Forest HLS agreements. We would expect further negotiations with New Forest agreement holders (and commoners who release livestock onto the land) to take place. This may result in further extensions in the short term, or lead to negotiating a new Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier agreement.

From 2024 we will be introducing a new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme. ELM will reward farmers and other land managers for delivering environmental public goods such as clean air, and thriving plants and wildlife. We will determine in more detail what ELM will pay for to support the delivery of these public goods as we develop the scheme. A National Pilot for ELM is due to commence in late 2021 and the scheme is scheduled to roll out in late 2024 across England. Our expectation is that HLS agreements, such as the New Forest’s, will provide an excellent foundation for developing into new agreements under ELM from late 2024.