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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding has been allocated to the Sustainable Farming Incentive for the 2025-26 financial year; and for what reason new applications have been paused since 11 March 2025.

The farming blog published on Wednesday 12 March set out Defra’s spend over the next two years (24/25 and 25/26). These are not ring-fenced figures and have the potential to change.

This showed that as of 11 March, £1.05 billion had been paid to farmers or committed for payment through existing agreements or submitted applications for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

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