Assessment of Environmental Land Management Wider Impacts

The UK’s departure from the European Union and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) offers the opportunity to rethink the aims, implementation and operation of agri-environmental schemes in England. Concurrently Defra has an ambitious agenda to enhance and protect the natural environment and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Our response to this opportunity has been to develop new environmental land management (E.L.M.) schemes. These schemes will be the cornerstone of our new agricultural policy and make a substantial contribution towards delivering the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan (25 YEP) and our net zero commitment.

There will be three E.L.M. schemes:

• The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will apply to farmers. It will pay them for actions they take to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way. Actions will be grouped into simple packages to make it as easy as possible for farmers to identify what actions are best suited to their land. All farms will be able to sign up.
• Local Nature Recovery (LNR) will pay for actions that support local nature recovery and deliver local environmental priorities; making sure the right things are delivered in the right places. The scheme will also encourage collaboration between farmers, helping them work together to improve their local environment. This scheme may have elements that are competitive.
• Landscape Recovery (LR) will support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, land use change projects, including projects to restore wilder landscapes in places where that is appropriate. These projects can deliver a wide variety of environmental outcomes and support local environmental priorities while making an important contribution to national targets. We expect that this scheme will be competitive.

The Authority requires a supplier to support in delivery of this programme by assessing the social and economic wider impacts of the three E.L.M. schemes.