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

To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had, if any, with the Environment Agency about increasing the number of on-farm reservoirs; and whether they will make their advice public.

The Farming Transformation Fund (FTF), part of the overall Farming Investment Fund, provides grants towards large capital items such as on-farm reservoirs for water management to help agriculture businesses improve productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability. The Environment Agency (EA) continues to support the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), who administer this fund by determining the abstraction licences associated with these applications.

In response to customer feedback, the RPA extended the full application submission deadline for the Farming Transformation Fund water management applications from 30 June until 30 September 2022. It also extended the deadline for the submission of planning permission and abstraction licences from 31 December 2022 to 31 March 2023.

The RPA has also sent out a second tranche of projects to submit FTF water management full applications. The deadline to submit a full application is 30 November 2022. The deadline for the submission of planning permission and abstraction licences, where they are required for a project, is 31 May 2023.