Welsh Moorland Amendment

As part of its ongoing work on implementing CAP reform, the Welsh Government is looking to amend the ‘moorland’ region.  As outlined in our articles of July and October, one of the proposed new BPS regions in Wales was to be defined by the moorland line.  However, there has been much discussion on what the payment rate in this area should be.  The Welsh Government is now thinking of re-defining the region so that only moorland above 400m (1,312 feet) in altitude is included.  This has the effect of reducing the moorland region from a claimed area of 290,000 hectares to 157,000 hectares.  The land removed from the moorland category will fall into the SDA or ‘Other’ region and will mean that payment levels for these regions are diluted.  Effectively, this proposal pushes more money ‘up the hill’ to the detriment of more productive areas.  A revised online map showing the new moorland line can be found at –  http://data.wales.gov.uk/apps/moorland/