FFIS Grants Awarded

DEFRA has announced that £19m will be distributed under the third round of the Farming and Forestry Improvement Scheme (FFIS).  Over 2,500 applicants have been awarded funding.  There will be others who will be disappointed however as the round, which closed in April, was heavily oversubscribed.  There will be no further rounds of this scheme, with future capital grants having to wait until the new Rural Development Programme for England is up and running – likely to be 2015 at the earliest.  The £19m was actually larger than the £10m said to be available when the round was launched (see February Bulletin).  DEFRA may well have found some unused budget in the current RDPE.  The discrepancy in funding, and the way that the DEFRA announcement appeared to indicate that it was new funding being made available, led some (including ourselves) to think a new FFIS round had opened.  Apologies.