Rural Stewardship Scheme

Initial Farm visits to establish whether or not an individual business has enough points to gain entry to the scheme and to go over the pieces of ground and relevant management practices is FREE.
This Scheme was introduced in 2000 to replace the old Countryside Premium Scheme (CPS) and will also replace the existing Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) program in the future. The scheme is a competitive one and applicants are awarded points for existing habitats / features on their unit as well as points for creating new habitats or going back to more traditional methods of cropping. The points threshold for entry to the scheme changes every year. In 2003 a change to the points system which awards 10 points for keeping all payments under £20,000 for the five years has effectually eliminated any larger scale schemes from being accepted. The total amount of money available has not changed which means that many more, smaller schemes are likely to be accepted in the future. In 2003 1078 applications were accepted from a total of 1087 submitted.

The aim of the scheme is to increase the diversity of plants and animals on farmland as well as protecting rare or declining habitats and species.

In practical terms it means that certain areas of the farm will be shutoff from grazing animals or fieldworks for specific periods of the year in return for an annual management payment.