Grants & subsidies

Basic Payment Scheme

The Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) is a subsidy that is available to farmers and landowners for keeping agricultural land in good agricultural and environmental condition. It is a complex scheme with strict deadlines and requirements, but our daily involvement with the Scheme on behalf of clients means that we are up-to-date and able to ensure that everything runs smoothly. The BPS in its current form will run until 2023. We can assist with:

Countryside Stewardship Scheme

Countryside Stewardship offers a range of environmental management agreements, from ten-year ‘Higher Tier’ agreements for environmentally important sites, to five-year ‘Mid Tier’ agreements for various farmland environments and woodland. There are also shorter agreements available for capital items such as concreting yards, stone wall restoration and hedge laying. We can:

Emerging Schemes

We are constantly monitoring the situation with regard to upcoming schemes.

Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI)

The SFI has recently been re-launched, where you can enter your land into a 3-year agreement and be paid for environmental land management actions that help you manage your land in a more sustainable way.

The SFI is considered to offer a more flexible approach than previous Countryside Stewardship agreements. The shorter term opens the scheme up to tenants; there is no set deadline for submission of the application; payments will be made quarterly to aid cashflow; and in general, the requirements are less restrictive than comparable Mid-Tier options.