Funding for farmers and land managers

If you’re a farmer, land manager or forester, you can apply for money to help you improve farm productivity and the environment.

Before you apply for a payment, you’ll need to check you (and your land, if relevant) are eligible.

You can apply for more than one of the available payments if:

• you meet the eligibility requirements for each payment
• the activities or outcomes you’re being paid for are compatible
• you will not be paid twice for a similar activity or outcome at the same time (and on the same area of land if it’s a land-based scheme)

One-off payments

One-off payments are to help you buy equipment or other capital items, or for activities you do once.

Investing in equipment, technology and infrastructure

The Farming Investment Fund (FIF) provides grants between £1,000 and £500,000 to improve productivity, the environment and animal health and welfare.

You can apply for:

• productivity and slurry items
• animal health and welfare items from March

The other FIF grants are currently closed to new applicants, but there will be further application rounds.

Research and innovation

You can apply for grants for innovation, research and development from the Farming Innovation Programme.

Improving animal health and welfare

Farmers who keep cattle, sheep or pigs can get funding to pay for a vet or vet-lead team to visit their farm and carry out an annual health and welfare review. If you’re a Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) eligible farmer, you can register your interest to apply for this funding on GOV.UK.

Later this year, you’ll also be able to apply for animal health and welfare capital grants for equipment, technology and infrastructure.

Improving boundaries, trees and orchards, water quality, air quality and natural flood management

You can apply for standalone capital grants under Countryside Stewardship (CS) Capital Grants 2023 to help you improve:

• boundaries, trees and orchards
• water quality
• air quality
• natural flood management

You can apply for these grants at any time of the year.

Improving environmentally significant sites and woodlands

CS Higher Tier Capital Grants 2023 offers standalone capital grants to improve environmentally significant sites and woodlands.

You can apply for these grants at any time of year.

Improving woodland infrastructure and protection from beaver activity

You can apply for CS Protection and Infrastructure Grants, which offer standalone capital grants to:

• improve management of woodlands by making them more accessible by road, allowing timber and other forest products to be moved for easily
• protect permanent crops and trees from beaver activity in eligible catchments

You can apply for these grants at any time of year.

Improving management of woodlands

The CS Woodland Management Plan grant 2023 offers a one-off payment to create a 10-year Woodland Management Plan that complies with the UK Forestry Standard.

Your plan must be approved by the Forestry Commission before you can apply for ongoing payments to deliver your plan under CS Higher Tier.

You can apply for this one-off payment at any time of the year.

Improving the health of trees

CS Woodland Tree Health Grants 2023 offers one-off payments to support:

• restocking woodland after felling due to a tree health issue
• removing trees and rhododendron infected with specific diseases

You can apply for these one-off payments at any time of year.

You can apply for funding through the tree health pilot if you manage specific trees or woodlands infected by specific pests and diseases in certain regions of England.

The tree health pilot offers different support to the CS Tree Health Grants, which will end in 2024.

The tree health pilot will run until 2024.

Supporting national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs)

The Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme provides funding to all farmers and land managers within an AONB or National Park in England who are planning projects that:

• support nature recovery
• mitigate the impacts of climate change
• provide opportunities for people to discover nature
• protect or improve the quality and character of the landscape

You can apply for funding any time up until the programme ends in March 2025. Your project must end in March 2025.

Leaving farming

The optional Lump Sum Exit Scheme enables farmers who were BPS applicants in 2018 or earlier to retire or leave the industry. It closed for applications on 30 September 2022.

Ongoing payments

Ongoing payments are for activities that usually take you a year or more to complete.

Managing your land in an environmentally sustainable way

If you’re a BPS eligible farmer, you can apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) to get paid for environmentally sustainable land management actions.

SFI is being rolled out incrementally, so it will expand each year until the full range of actions are available by early 2025.

You can currently apply for money to:

• support soil management
• assess the moorland and identify the environmental benefits it provides

Later this year you’ll be able to apply for funding to help with:

• integrated pest management
• nutrient management
• arable land
• improved grassland
• low input grassland
• hedgerows

The environmental land management update has information about the new actions that will be introduced this year.

You can apply for SFI at any time of year.

Managing habitats, woodlands, flood risk and reducing water pollution

You can apply for Countryside Stewardship (CS) to get paid to manage habitats, woodland, flood risk and reduce water pollution.

CS Mid Tier offers ongoing and one-off payments to protect and improve:

• the diversity of wildlife
• water quality
• air quality
• natural flood management

You can apply from March 2023.

CS Higher Tier offers ongoing and one-off payments to help manage environmentally important sites, including commons and woodlands.

You can apply for a CS Higher Tier now. Your initial application must be submitted by 28 April 2023.

During 2023 and 2024, Defra will evolve CS instead of developing a new Local Nature Recovery scheme. Read Defra’s environmental land management update to find out about the environmental land management actions that will be available in CS.

Large scale landscape and ecosystem restoration projects

Landscape Recovery offers funding for groups of land managers to do longer-term, larger-scale (around 500 to 5000 hectares), land use change projects such as:

• creating woodland
• restoring wetland and peatland
• enhancing bogs, fens or saltmarshes
• creating nature reserves

The second round of Landscape Recovery applications will open in spring 2023. It will focus on net zero, protected sites and habitat creation projects.

Planting trees

The England Woodland Creation Grant (EWCO) provides funding to create new woodland on areas that are at least 1 hectare.

You can apply for EWCO at any time of the year until the scheme closes and these activities are funded through CS.

There are other grants available for woodland creation, maintenance, management and tree health.

There are also other regional funding opportunities to create woodland, such as:

• England’s Community Forests - funding is available for planting trees in some areas
• The Northern Forest - you can get paid to create woodland in parts of Lancashire, Merseyside, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire
• The National Forest - money is available to create and maintain forests across the country

Planning woodland

The Woodland Creation Planning Grant (WCPG) provides funding to prepare a Woodland Creation Design Plan that complies with the UK Forestry Standard.

You can use this plan to support further woodland creation grant applications, such as EWCO.

You can apply for WCPG at any time of the year.

Restoring peatlands

The Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme (NCPGS) provides funding to restore peatlands in uplands and lowlands of England.

From April 2023, you’ll be able to apply for restoration grants to fund landscape scale restoration work on degraded peatlands.

The scheme will run until 2025.

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Direct Payments

BPS

You can apply for a BPS 2023 payment from 14 March 2023.

You must submit your application by 15 May 2023 to avoid late application penalties.

BPS will end on 31 December 2023.

From 2024, BPS will be replaced by ‘delinked payments’. These payments will be made until 2027.

Each year, direct payments are being progressively reduced until they’re phased out by 2028. You can calculate how these progressive reductions could affect your direct payments for 2023 and 2024.

Get advice

You can contact:

• the Defra Rural Services helpline about funding, including BPS, CS and Common Agricultural Policy
• the Farming Advice Service about cross compliance, BPS, pesticide use, water use and quality

You can also get support from:

• organisations that provide advice through the Future Farming Resilience Fund to help you plan for the future - this advice is free if you get BPS
• the Farming Community Network about arable farming, animal health and welfare
• Woodland Creation officers or your local Forestry Commission Woodland Officer about planting and managing woodland about planting and managing woodland
• your Catchment Sensitive Farming local farm advisor for advice about water or air quality, or reducing flood risk on your land
• the Bovine TB Advisory Service to help reduce the incidence and severity of bovine TB breakouts