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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the letter of 18 November from the Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the hon. Member for High Peak on small abattoirs, if he will provide (a) a list the 79 LEADER groups in England and (b) the closing date of applications for each LEADER group in each area.

Full details of the 79 LEADER groups are available through the Rural Development Programme for England LEADER homepage on gov.uk.

At a national level, the LEADER programme is on track to commit the majority of its funds by March 2019 with more than half of these groups now closed to new applications.

Individual LEADER groups close their programmes when they have sufficient demand to spend their full allocation. As a result, the decision to close is made by the LEADER groups and is shown on their individual websites.

A list of LEADER programmes currently open is provided in the table below.