Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship Reviews and New Applications
The Countryside Stewardship (CS) High Priority Water areas will be extended to cover all medium priority areas for this coming round of CS grants. This will allow access to capital items such as manure stores and concrete yard renewal.
If you have a CS agreement which started in 2018 you will possibly have received an offer of a mirror agreement from the Rural Payments Agency. This will in effect roll your existing agreement into a new agreement starting 1st January 2023. At Vickers and Barrass we are advising clients to review their existing agreements before accepting any offer. By considering a new agreement you have the flexibility to replace options which have possibly not worked well at farm level with new options and possibly larger areas. In addition capital works could be added into a new agreement.
If you have an Environmental Stewardship Agreement which is coming to an end in 2022 you might be offered an extension from the Rural Payments Agency in effect extending the existing agreement for a further year. However this is an opportunity to explore if the annual payment previously received could be improved under a new CS agreement.
Now is a good time to review existing agreements and potentially add value to a new CS agreement, to find out if you will be in a High Priority area or if you could benefit financially from a new CS agreement please contact Alan Falshaw, Farm Business Consultant on 07425 186127 or afalshaw@vickersandbarrass.co.uk
