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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the alignment of the timing of funding schemes for farmers with the farming calendar.

Defra will be opening the Environmental Land Management (ELM) Capital Grant scheme and the new Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier offer in the Summer on a rolling application window basis. This will enable farmers to apply throughout the year, while enabling Defra to continue to monitor the situation to make sure demand doesn’t exceed the available funding. For the ELM Capital Grant scheme, farmers will be able to apply for a grant in more than one category but only submit one application per farm business Single Business Identifier (SBI) can be submitted per year. Other grants remain open, including grants for Woodland management plans, the Higher Tier Capital Grant, Capital grants plans, the Protection and Infrastructure grant, and Woodland tree health grants.

We expect to publish more information about the reformed Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) offer in summer 2025. This will include an indication of when we expect to re-open SFI for applications.