The NPA provides a rundown of the new funding which has been made available under the Countryside Stewardship Programme (CSS) capital grant options.

What options are available?

CSS is the replacement ELS/HLS scheme in England – covering land management options but also capital works. Capital works tend to focus upon water quality measures, and there are many different options available including slurry store covers, but also concrete yard renewal funding, gateway relocation, livestock shed re-roofing and biobed filters.

The options of interest are self-supporting covers for slurry stores and floating covers for slurry stores and lagoons, offering £30.50 and £5.60 per square metre of funding respectively. You can apply for these options on their own, but you can also apply for other water quality options, as well as the more traditional land management options seen with ELS/HLS in the past – in one big package. The benefit of CSS is that you don’t have to meet arbitrary points targets or anything like that – you simply apply for as much or as little as you like. All of the other options can be found here.

Are you eligible?

Unfortunately not every pig business will be eligible for the cover grants. The reason for this is that Defra are targeting funding only to areas that they deem to be at ‘high risk’ of water pollution – areas that are ‘medium’ risk generally are not covered. In order to find out if you are in a high risk area, simply follow the steps outlined here. You need to consult the Defra maps and check if your farm falls under a ‘red’ area – if so, then you are likely to be eligible. If you are near a border of high and medium risk, then it is still worth checking eligible via Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) officers.

How to apply if you are eligible

Applications for grant funding close on 31 July 2019. The guidebook to the grant schemes can be found here with information on how to apply online or by post.

For more information on eligibility and applying for a grant, visit the NPA website.