Countryside Stewardship Funding

DEFRA has announced that £7.2 million will be available to assist farmers wanting to work together on landscape-scale Countryside Stewardship Schemes (CSS).  The money will fund facilitators who will assist co-operation between land managers, set the agreements’ CSS priorities and work closely with DEFRA and Natural England.  Facilitators will need to be able to provide group members with the necessary skills (or procure training from others) and maintain links to ensure the group is undertaking work that complements local partnerships and initiatives.  Facilitation funding will not cover with helping group members through the application process.  Facilitators can be paid £500 per holding and up to £10,000 in costs for delivering co-operation.  Land managers with existing agri-environment schemes can be included in the group with the potential for adjustments to be made to agreements where necessary (and permitted) according to scheme priorities.

Applications for funding are competitive with an initial assessment completed by Natural England.  A local assessment by Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Forestry will follow. This will then go before a national appraisal panel who will appraise each application and decide who is successful.  Applications for facilitation funding must be completed by 13^th May 2015.  Further application windows will be open in 2016 and 2017 (Just in case farmers and potential facilitators are a bit busy before then!).  Full details can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-countryside-stewardship-facilitation-fund