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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing Sustainable Farming Incentive funding for all projects aimed to (a) protect water courses, (b) improve public access and (c) reduce carbon emissions.

In January 2023, Defra published an “Environmental Land Management update: how government will pay for land-based environment and climate goods and services”. This publication sets out all the activities we will pay farmers and land managers to carry out from 2024, to improve the environment alongside food production. This includes activities to protect water courses and reduce carbon emissions.

We want to offer further support for access to our countryside, farmland or woodland, and so under our Environmental Land Management Schemes we are also exploring how we can pay for more access actions including new permissive access and expanding educational access beyond groups of school pupils and care farming visitors.

Additionally, through our Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, we provide funding to support and improve Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks. Under this programme we pay for projects that provide opportunities for people to discover, enjoy and understand the landscape and its cultural heritage, including permissive access.

We will publish further details on the 2024 offer later this year.