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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of the total land entered into the Sustainable Farming Incentive herbal ley action (CSAM3) has been on priority habitat grassland; and how many hectares of priority habitat grassland is this.

The published Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) CSAM3 herbal ley guidance protects priority habitat grassland by explicitly stating that the only eligible land types are arable, temporary grassland and improved permanent grassland. It also notes that Priority Habitats are protected by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) (Agriculture) Regulations, and that permission would be needed from Natural England before undertaking any activities which ‘increase the productivity of 2 hectares or more of uncultivated land or semi-natural areas – such as ploughing, applying fertilisers, sowing seed, converting grassland to arable, and clearing scrub or vegetation’.

We estimate that 202ha (0.15%) of species-rich priority habitat grassland and 720ha (0.91%) of good quality semi-improved grassland have herbal leys somewhere within the land parcels. There is some uncertainty in this estimate as it will depend at more detailed scale whether a portion of a land parcel contains priority grassland. Implementing herbal leys on part of a land parcel which is not priority habitat could be done without damaging a different part of the same land parcel which is priority habitat grassland. Where the existing priority habitat sward contains the mix of species required for a herbal ley it is entirely possible the existing management is continuing, avoiding any damage to the priority habitat.

We continue to monitor the situation while developing improved guidance for where and how to implement herbal leys, as well as signposting to more appropriate SFI actions for grasslands with potential to become species rich.