Improving Your Chances of Capital Grant Scheme Claim Success

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Improving Your Chances of Capital Grant Scheme Claim Success – Emily Wynder (Sherborne)

The next window in early 2022 seems along time away but planning and preparation needs to happen now.

  1. Request the application form in good time (historically the application window has opened in February and closed end if July annually).
  2. Ensure that you are in a priority catchment area.
  3. Get your previous capital grant applications completed and claimed for as soon as able.
  4. Make use of your farmyard inner boundaries to create practical plot sizes which will enable you to have multiple claims over the different farm buildings/yards annually.
  5. Take photos of the areas where building improvements are required at a time of year when they show their higher risk of pollution.
  6. Contact your Catchment Sensitive Farming Officer (CSFO) before the application window is open, this allows them a chance to visit and discuss options with you before they get busy writing endorsements.

We are starting to receive the grant approvals for Capital Grant Scheme (CGS) applications sent in Feb-April 2021 (with 1st August 2021 start date).  This year the CGS allowed for up to £60,000 grant funding for capital items relating to hedgerows and boundaries, water quality and air pollution, this included items such as concrete yard renewal, roofing, livestock and machinery tracks, passageway auto scrapers, fencing and hedge laying.  Grant payments are fixed per unit length of fencing or per metre of concrete, the costs being 100% covered up till now.  It remains to be seen whether building material inflation will alter grant payments going forward.  Some farmers are able to apply to this grant annually, as they plan early, and get the capital works completed and claimed for promptly, allowing them to apply again the following year without the restriction of the land parcel already being under an agreement.

The reduction of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) is to direct funds to such grants for improving water quality and pollution.  Plan ahead and get your farm fit for farming without BPS and compliant with air and water pollution regulations coming in the future by contacting Emily at emilywynder@fcgagric.com or your local FCG Office.

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