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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to renew the Farm Facilitation Fund beyond March 2025.

We recognise the importance of farmer and land manager collaboration. In future years we want to make it easier for farmers to build partnerships and secure the advice and support they need to deliver on a range of priorities in their local area.

That’s why the Agricultural Transition Plan Update, published in January 2024, committed to the development of an expanded and improved facilitation fund.

To support this change, we are not opening further rounds of the Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund. We are still funding existing agreements.

Ahead of the Spending Review, we are testing how we develop a more flexible approach to supporting farmer networks and partnerships. We will learn from the evaluation of the Facilitation Fund, which proves the benefits of collaboration but also shows that we need to improve the design, so it is less burdensome for participants, and we can increase uptake.