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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason his Department selected 12 January 2025 as the deadline for the started but not submitted applicant group for the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.

When farmers started an application and saved without submitting, they were shown a message that said "Your application will be available for 2 months for you to continue. If you have not submitted your application by then, we will delete it". This is why applicants who started an application before 12 January 2025 were not eligible for the reopened SFI as they had exceeded that 2 months.