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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department had discussions with (a) farming groups and (b) stakeholders prior to the decision to close the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.

The high uptake of the scheme means it is fully subscribed. The decision to close the scheme to new applications was taken at that point.

We could not give any advance notice because we needed to ensure fair access to the scheme and avoid creating a sudden increase in the level of demand.

Since we launched the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) in 2022 we have worked closely with the farming sector and stakeholders to develop and improve the offer to make sure it worked for as many different farmers and land types as possible.

We will continue to do this in order to develop the reformed SFI offer.