Farming Recovery Fund
(asked on 16th January 2025) - View Source
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 Farming Recovery Fund, if he will publish (a) the number of individual payments made by and (b) total costs of those payment to each local authority area for each year since the fund was established.
Farming Recovery Fund payments are made directly to farmers. The Farming Recovery Fund is activated by the Government of the day and has been activated in 2015, 2019, 2020 and again in 2024 depending on the scale and impacts of the flooding, these are detailed below:
- In 2015 when Storm Desmond produced 341mm of rainfall at Honister Pass in Cumbria in 24 hours.
- In 2019/2020, a flash flood in North Yorkshire affecting a single parish and the collapse of a flood embankment in Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, and widescale flooding across central and eastern England.
- In 2024 an expanded fund following Storms Babet, Henk and the exceptional wet weather during the six-month period October 2023 to March 2024
Each iteration of the Farming Recovery Fund is different depending on when, where and what the weather conditions were which caused the flooding. Farmers were able to apply for these funds the details of which are set out below.
Region | FRF 2015 | FRF 2019 | FRF 2020 | |||
Number | Amount | Number | Amount | Number | Amount | |
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire | 1 | £9,120.00 |
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|
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Cheshire |
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|
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| 1 | £3,948.94 |
Cumbria | 530 | £4,647,445.22 |
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|
|
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Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire |
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| 18 | £78,834.38 | 4 | £28,006.84 |
East Anglia | 1 | £1,530.00 |
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|
|
East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire | 8 | £34,027.49 | 2 | £5,515.78 | 1 | £1,361.30 |
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bath/Bristol area | 1 | £2,924.20 | 1 | £21,387.50 | 35 | £241,976.01 |
Greater Manchester | 7 | £33,124.52 |
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|
|
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Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire |
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| 6 | £52,665.32 | 70 | £362,580.74 |
Inner London - West | 1 | £3,603.00 |
|
| 1 | £1,730.00 |
Lancashire | 129 | £978,167.39 |
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|
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Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire |
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| 1 | £5,829.50 |
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|
Lincolnshire | 1 | £19,846.00 | 30 | £165,887.13 |
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North Yorkshire | 212 | £1,507,147.20 | 36 | £266,871.18 |
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Northumberland, and Tyne and Wear | 60 | £425,640.21 |
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Shropshire and Staffordshire | 1 | £20,000.00 |
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| 29 | £120,655.82 |
South Yorkshire | 1 | £514.90 | 12 | £39,280.42 |
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Tees Valley and Durham | 15 | £106,270.76 |
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West Yorkshire | 27 | £181,071.49 |
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Total payments to English registered businesses | 995 | £7,970,432.38 | 106 | £636,271.21 | 141 | £760,259.65 |
Paid for land in England but business registered in other UK country | 4 | £31,867.98 |
|
| 3 | £7,368.36 |
Grand total | 999 | £8,002,300.36 | 106 | £636,271.21 | 144 | £767,628.01 |
We will publish data for the 2024 Farming Recovery Fund once payments have been finalised. The 2024 Farming Recovery Fund has paid around 12,700 farming businesses £57.5 million, to date.
Recovery payments were always intended as an exceptional intervention. Defra is working with the Flood Resilience Taskforce to develop a longer-term solution to the impacts of our changing climate on the agricultural sector. We are also investing in environmental land management schemes which include actions to improve flood resilience and water management on farms.