Environmental Stewardship

Quick links
Environmental Stewardship outline booklet [1.6 MB] Scheme handbooks and forms to download Agreement start dates [26 KB] Environmental Stewardship illustrated guidance Agri-environment Matters Newsletter Advice to Farmers and Land Managers (RDS) Conservation Advice (ADAS)

Latest news

Scheme progress: Over 2,700,000 hectares now under agreement. Over 20,200 live agreements in place with a first year payments value of more than £89 million.

New Environmental Stewardship options announced (3 July 2006)

Agri-environment Matters - Summer 2006 [676 Kb] - the newsletter for all Agri-environment agreement holders in England (16 June 2006)

Scheme progress: Over 2,700,000 hectares now under agreement. Over 20,200 live agreements in place with a first year payments value of more than £89 million.

Links to HLS Land Management Options prescriptions and indicators of success have been added to the online version of the HLS handbook.

Environmental Stewardship Evaluation Plan [336 Kb] (14 February)

FEP Newsletter [179 Kb] - sharing lessons that we have learnt in the early stages of HLS (16 March 2006)

Environmental Stewardship payments begin - £47m in first year

• What is it?
• What are the benefits?
• Regional News
• How do I apply?
• Agreement start dates
• Registering your land

What is it?

Environmental Stewardship is a new agri-environment scheme which provides funding to farmers and other land managers in England who deliver effective environmental management on their land.

The scheme is intended to build on the recognised success of the Environmental Sensitive Areas scheme and the countryside Stewardship Scheme. Its primary objectives are to:

• Conserve wildlife (biodiversity)
• Maintain and enhance landscape quality and character
• Protect the historic environment and natural resources
• Promote public access and understanding of the countryside
• Natural resource protection

Within the primary objectives it also has the secondary objectives of:

• Genetic conservation
• Flood management

Environmental stewardship has three elements:

Entry Level Stewardship (ELS)

• Open to all farmers and landowners.
• Simple and effective land management.

Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS)

• Organic strand of ELS.
• Open to all farmers not receiving Organic Farming Scheme (OFS) aid.

Higher Level Stewardship (HLS)

• Targeted environmental management.
• Capital work plans.

Download the Environmental Stewardship promotional booklet [1.6MB]

What are the benefits?

ELS provides a straightforward approach to supporting the good stewardship of the countryside. OELS takes a similar approach, but is geared to organic and organic/conventional mixed farming systems. HLS is designed to build on ELS and OELS to form a comprehensive agreement that achieves a wide-range of environmental benefits across the whole farm. HLS concentrates on the more complex types of management where land managers need advice and support and where agreements will be tailored to local circumstances. ELS and OELS go beyond what will be required under the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) cross compliance conditions. Entering into an Environmental Stewardship agreement will not remove any cross compliance obligations.

Regional news

Follow the relevant link below to your region. There may be information on regional news and events, e.g. meetings, including dates, times, venues:

• East of England
• East Midlands
• North East
• North West
• South East
• South West
• West Midlands
• Yorkshire and the Humber

How do I apply?

Information on how to apply is available in the handbooks that support Environmental Stewardship. There are separate handbooks for each element of the scheme, and an additional handbook for the Farm Environment Plans required for Higher Level Stewardship.

• Entry Level Stewardship handbook
• Organic Entry Level Stewardship handbook
• Higher Level Stewardship handbook
• Farm Environment Plan handbook

Agreement start dates

The first Environmental Stewardship (ES) agreements got underway from 1 August 2005.

Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) and Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS)

ELS and OELS operates on the basis of monthly start dates.

Our target will be to provide you with an agreement within three months of receipt of a valid application. Agreements will commence on the first day of each month so for example, we aim to issue an agreement by 1 October for a valid application received during July. We will give you the earliest start date we are able to unless you ask for a specific date later than the three month target.

Higher Level Stewardship (HLS)

We are not able to extend monthly agreement start dates to HLS as the requirements of this element of Environmental Stewardship are quite different and more complex.

The anticipated 2006 and 2007 agreement start dates for applications are scheduled to be as follows (the 2007 dates are subject to securing timely EU approval of the new Rural Development Programme from the beginning of 2007 ).

Registering your land

Registering your land on the Rural Land Register for Environmental Stewardship (ES) applications

The scheme handbook makes clear that only land that is on the Rural Land Register can be entered into Environmental Stewardship. Due to the very high demand for new land registrations and for changes to existing details Defra has had to prioritise cases for urgent registration. From 15 July 2005 priority will be given to land registrations that are essential for the UK to most accurately estimate Single Payment Scheme entitlements. This entitlement exercise will affect some 120,000 farmers in England.

In many cases customers who wish to enter their land into Environmental Stewardship will also be in this priority exercise as they will have requested the registration of the same land with their SPS application. This will be subject to priority criteria set by RPA.

New requests and amendments to land registration cases can continue to be referred to the Rural Payment Agency and, once the land is registered, an application for ES can be made. As explained above we operate a system of monthly agreement start dates for ELS and OELS and our target will be to provide you with an agreement within three months of receipt of a valid application. ELS and OELS are open for applications at any time. Whilst entry into the scheme may be delayed for some customers, no one will be excluded.

If only small areas of your holding are unregistered you may wish to enter the bulk of your land now. Please contact your regional Rural Development Service Business Delivery Centre [35 KB] for details of other options that may be open to you.