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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will introduce a mechanism to incentivise the creation of river habitat corridors across neighbouring farms to the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier.

Farmers and land managers can already work together to create river habitat corridors across neighbouring farms through Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier. Farmers can consider Feasibility Studies to support this.

The scheme already includes actions supporting river and floodplain habitat restoration, including:

• CSW12 – making room for rivers to move naturally and reducing erosion and flood risk
• CSW22 – reconnecting rivers with floodplains to create diverse wetland habitats
• CSW25 – managing riparian habitats to improve biodiversity and water resilience

These actions restore dynamic river and floodplain habitats, allowing natural movement, seasonal flooding, and reduced erosion and help reconnect rivers and floodplains to help create diverse wetland features that support biodiversity, climate adaptation and natural flood and drought management.