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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2025 to Question 38604 on Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of farmers whose applications were ready for submission but missed out due to the short notice about the scheme's closure.

This Government inherited an uncapped scheme aimed at mass participation of farm businesses, despite a finite farming budget. In order to ensure we acted in a financially responsible way we took the decision to stop accepting new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) applications. We needed to ensure fair access to the scheme and avoid creating a sudden increase in the level of demand.

This Government’s commitment to farmers and the vital role they play to feed our nation remains steadfast.  Since we launched the SFI in 2022 Defra have worked closely with the farming sector to develop the SFI and we will continue to do so for the reformed the SFI offer, which we expect to publish more information about in summer 2025.