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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the risk of landowners evicting tenant farmers that seek to use land for (1) water storage, (2) carbon sequestration, (3) tree planting, as part of Environmental Land Management Schemes; and what steps they are taking to mitigate any such risk.

The Government is working to ensure that the design of our future farming schemes is broadly accessible to as many land managers as possible including tenant farmers. As part of this we are considering questions around landlord consent and length of scheme agreement and we are exploring and testing how our new schemes might work in practice across different types of holdings and different types and lengths of tenancy agreements.

For our new environmental land management schemes to be successful, we need them to work for a wide range of farmers, foresters and other land managers including tenant farmers.

As part of the development of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, we have considered the needs of tenants and have worked closely with a number of organisations including the Tenant Farmers Association, Country Land and Business Association and National Farmers’ Union. We’re also working with tenants through our pilot, test and trials and user research

For the Sustainable Farming Incentive Pilot, participants must have management control of the land included within the agreement for the duration of the pilot agreement. This is so that participants can fulfil the actions on the land whilst under agreement but has allowed tenants with land covered by short term tenancies to apply for the scheme pilot.

We are embedding the pilot learning and will continually review this eligibility to inform our development of all the future schemes including the early roll out of the Sustainable Farming Incentive in 2022.

Whilst land under Agricultural Holdings Act Tenancy Agreements and Farm Business Tenancy Agreements is substantially for agricultural use, landlords and tenants can work together positively to agree to diversifications including using the land for environmental improvements which can often be delivered alongside agricultural production.

To encourage this the Tenancy Reform Industry Group recently produced a Code of Good Practice CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE (rics.org) providing guidance to help tenants, landlords and their advisers take a positive and practical approach to agreeing variations to agricultural tenancy agreements that will help the sector adapt and make the most of new opportunities as we move through the agricultural transition period.

The Government encourages all tenants and landlords to work together and follow the Code of Practice on agreeing diversifications as we transition to new agricultural polices based on public money for public goods.