Rural Development Schemes Secured October 4, 2016 12:00 am Current agri-environment schemes will remain open until the UK formally leaves the EU. This comes after an announcement from the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, which extends the guarantee given in August that any agreement signed before the Autumn Statement would be honoured by the Treasury. It has now been stated that any structural and investment fund projects, including agri-environment schemes, signed before the date of Brexit, will be paid up in full. The announcement can be found at – https://www.gov.uk/government/news/further-certainty-on-eu-funding-for-hundreds-of-british-projects Most immediately, this will allow Natural England to offer Countryside Stewardship agreements to applicants this autumn, to commence on the 1st January 2017. Given a likely Brexit date of early 2019, then it seems probably that there will be at least one more round of CSS applications in 2017 for a 01/01/2018 start date, and possibly even one more beyond that. Other parts of the Rural Development programme in England such as LEADER group funding and the Growth Programme through the LEPs should also be able to continue for at least two more years. Further rounds of the Countryside Productivity Scheme might also be expected in due course. It should also be noted that this guarantee extends to the devolved administrations as well. Therefore schemes such as Glastir, LFASS etc. will also continue.
