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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether underspend in the current financial year’s Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier budget will be (a) protected, and (b) carried forward into next year’s allocation.

Defra expects to increase both the numbers of farmers and land managers coming into the scheme and related spend on the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier scheme over the course of the coming year. The scale of ambition for the number of agreements in this first phase remains unchanged.

To support this, Defra has been carefully rolling out Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier over the course of 2025 and into 2026. Since January 2025, Natural England and the Forestry Commission have offered pre-application advice to over 2,400 farmers and land managers. The application service opened on 18 September 2025, and so far over 650 sites have been invited to apply.

Defra is continuing to work with farmers and land managers to support completion of their pre-application advice and, where agreed, invite them into the service to apply over the coming months.