Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier application window opens for 2024 agreements

From  7 February farmers and land managers can submit new applications for the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier, rewarding them for their actions to protect and improve their natural environment.

Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier offers multi-year agreements and one-off grants for over 250 different actions farmers can take to enhance the environment alongside their farming business, from planting and maintaining new hedgerows or woodland through to restoring peatland and moorlands.

The start of the application window comes after Defra announced an average increase of 10% for Countryside Stewardship revenue payment rates – covering ongoing activity such as habitat management. Capital payment rates, which cover one-off projects such as hedgerow creation, were also increased by an average of 48%.

To support farmers and land managers with applications and to help encourage them to take action on their land, changes have been made to the application process. These include:

• For the first time, a new Higher Tier capital-only offer has been introduced, awarding grants to help support the most environmentally significant sites and woodlands, including preparatory works for the creation and restoration of priority habitats and priority species. Successful applicants will now have three years to complete their activity and submit claims;
• An annual claim declaration, which means that agreement holders will not have to complete a burdensome annual claim form. Instead, they will be able to declare online that they are fulfilling the obligations of their agreement, reducing the administrative burden on farmers and landowners and making the claim for payment process quicker and more straightforward.
• Where farmers or land managers are already in Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreements, they can also apply for a Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier agreement to start from 1 January 2024, as long as they are undertaking actions that are different to and do not conflict with their Higher Level Stewardship agreement.

See: Higher Tier grants 2023: Countryside Stewardship - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)