The Welsh Government has published a written statement on Riparian Ownership: Maintaining Watercourses, highlighting guidance document produced by NRW which explains to landowners how riparian ownership works, and how it might affect them.
From today (12 February), all new major housing developments in England are required to deliver at least a 10% Biodiversity Net Gain. A collection of related CAAV resources and external guidance is available on our website here: BNG - CAAV Collected Guidance - Version 1 - The Central Association for Agricultural Valuers.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 8th February 2024 It started in Holland but has now spread to most EU countries in the mainland of Europe, from Spain to Poland as farmers bring their tractors to town make their points. Each country’s protests though follow its national agenda, perhaps only unified by the EU’s pernickety farm-level auditing of the CAP and the growing force of the EU Green Deal. With a wider background of western malaise and ahead of...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 1st February 2024 Many very large things are being asked of us and our land. We are being asked to answer climate change and adapt to increasingly volatile weather, reducing emissions, sequestering carbon and managing water, improving nature and eco-systems, providing housing and other development including infrastructure – and still provide food. All that is to come from the finite area of our islands at a time of growing...
The Bank of England has held its base rate at 5.25% with the Governor noting that geopolitical risks had intensified. Six members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted for a standstill, two for an increase and one for a cut.
On their blog, the RPA has reminded BPS claimants of the new deadlines for payment queries and appeals. The 60 day deadline starts on the ‘date of notification’. This is the date the RPA emails or writes to a claimant, giving notification of a payment decision. This can be:a payment remittancea payment querya response to a payment query, when the original payment query was received by the RPA within 60 days of sending a payment remittanceFor any BPS payment decisions notified before 1...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 25th January 2024 It can be worth remembering in today’s rapidly changing circumstances and new environmental offers that, where law or taxation make special provisions for farming, their benefit can be limited to where farming is being done. They are not entitlements, but conditional. Where agricultural activity ceases, the benefit of those special provisions can be lost. The provisions are to assist those who are farmers,...
Applications have now opened for the 2nd round of the Improving Farm Productivity Grant. For more detail on the grant, see our website note of 14th December. Since the initial publication of the scheme guidance, DEFRA has increased the proportion of the costs that the grant will cover from 40% to 50% for robotic and automated equipment....
Two major energy projects have reached milestones in their consenting. Sizewell C has announced that it has satisfied the commitments made in its Deed of Obligation. These were preliminary tasks required under the Development Consent Order (DCO) and preconditions for the start of the formal construction phase. The start of construction is not conditional on the final investment decision (FID) which is expected to be taken later in 2024. The Drax Bioenergy carbon capture and storage project was...
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 18th January 2024 The encouragement of private capital with and alongside public money has been a recurrent theme in government statements on environmental policy. DEFRA has set out very round figures as targets for this, calling for £500 million of private investment in “nature recovery” by 2027 and £1 billion by 2030 (perhaps 40 per cent of England’s legacy CAP money but not all necessarily agricultural or even...
DEFRA has confirmed the start dates for biodiversity net gain in England:From 12 February 2024, BNG will be mandatory for new planning applications for major development made under the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) 1990, subject to the confirmed exemptions.BNG for small sites will have an extended transition period and will apply from 2 April 2024....
Following the start-of-the-year announcement by the DEFRA Secretary on schemes and coming farming policy, DEFRA is hosting several webinars to brief advisers and farmers. The Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP) will be holding an adviser specific webinar on Monday 22nd January: Advisor Webinar - the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI24) Tickets, Mon 22 Jan 2024 at 15:00 | Eventbrite. DEFRA are hosting a webinar on 26th January. Janet Hughes and others from the RPA will be providing an...
Round 2 of the Slurry Infrastructure grant will close for applications on Wednesday 17th January. In addition to the scheme guidance, DEFRA has posted a blog item providing a recap of the grant and the information needed to get started.
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 11th January 2024 Recent weeks have seen a mood that interest rates may be on the way down. However, UK 10 year gilts are nudging back up to 4 per cent and there seems reason for rates to remain higher for longer and also be more volatile. The strange period was the 15 years of unprecedented ultra-low interest rates from 2008 to 2023, not the last few months in which we have returned to a world of significant interest rates....
DAERA has announced that the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) is providing free, face-to-face Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) training sessions for farmers in the County Down area.
Scottish Government has made an announcement on the Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme (SSBSS) 2024, the application window is now open, and will close on Tuesday 31st December 2024.
Defra has reviewed and updated Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payment rates based on current costs. Where the 2024 rate has increased, the higher payment rate will be paid for: existing SFI Pilot and 2023 agreements, backdated to the start of their current agreement year.new applications received in 2024 SFI 22 payment rates are not changing as the scheme is closing....
The Scottish Government has launched a consultation with a view to updating the legislation on the management of wild deer. The consultation follows the report of the Deer Working Group in 2020. The proposed legislative changes seek to improve deer management taking into consideration climate change and biodiversity. Changes to legislation that were made in 2023 include to remove the close season for all male deer, to enable the wider use of non-toxic ammunition and to facilitate night...
Robbie Moore, Floods Minister, has made a statement in the Commons on the renewed flooding in England following Storm Henk, noting that: “Parts of the country had a month’s worth of rain in the first four days of January, and that rain fell on already saturated ground. Several of our biggest river systems—the Trent, Thames, Severn and Avon—saw record levels, or close to record levels …” He stressed the protection given by recent flood defence works and the 2022 planning guidance...
As a striking achievement, the United Kingdom is now about halfway to its net zero target for 2050, the first G7 country to do so. With the lags in producing statistics, the headline territorial measure for UK-produced greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 has now been reported at 51 per cent of their level in 1990, lower than before the pandemic and expected to have fallen further in 2023. With much of this achieved by increased renewable energy reducing the share of fossil fuel in electricity...