Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many times each water company breached their storm overflow permits in 2023.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency will publish the 2023 Event Duration Monitoring data for storm overflows in March 2024.
The data for previous years is available here: Event Duration Monitoring - Storm Overflows - Annual Returns - data.gov.uk.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to help support the mental health of farmers during the transition from the Basic Payment Scheme to the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is introducing ambitious new schemes for farmers and land managers in England, which will help their businesses become more productive and sustainable by rewarding them for farming in a way that will deliver environmental and animal welfare outcomes. We are also reforming the way we regulate, with greater emphasis on advice and improvement, so farmers and regulators work together to improve the countryside.
We are providing support during the early years of the transition via the Future Farming Resilience Fund. One of the key required outcomes for the Resilience Fund is that farmers’ mental health and wellbeing are supported. Some delivery providers are offering this support from in-house experts and others are signposting support available from external expert services. We have worked with the Yellow Wellies charity, to provide advice and information on how to identify potential mental health issues and provide tools for addressing them.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 19 December 2023 to Question 5961 on Agriculture: Floods, how many farmers have been awarded grants to install property flood resilience measures in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs does not have data on how many farmers were awarded grants under the Property Flood Resilience repair grant scheme. Farmers are entitled to apply for support under this scheme as either householders or businesses, depending on the property impacted. We can however provide a breakdown of grants provided by households and businesses:
There are two schemes which have run in recent years, not including the currently active Storm Babet (Oct 23) and Storm Henk (Jan 24) schemes.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 28 December 2023 to Question 5955 on Agriculture: Flood Control, how many countryside stewardship grants have been awarded to farmers since 5 January 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There are currently around 35,000 live Countryside Stewardship agreements. Of these, 8,200 new agreements started in 2023 and 8,600 agreements are starting in 2024. Actions to help with flood control measures are worth around £4.02 million in live agreements.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to increase payment rates for the (a) Higher Level Stewardship and (b) Upland Entry Level Stewardship schemes.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We do not have plans to update prices for Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) or Upland Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) agreements. This is because these agreements are made on a whole farm basis and payments work differently in those schemes.
From the 1st of January 2023 we made it possible for customers in HLS leave their agreements early, without recovery of payments, and enter another land management scheme and we will continue to support these moves. The new scheme must be of equivalent or greater environmental value than the HLS component of their existing agreement. Agreement holders can also apply for a Countryside Stewardship, Sustainable Farming Incentive and/or a Landscape Recovery agreement for any land that does not already contain a HLS option, they can be next to each other but must not overlap.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to introduce 10 year sustainable farming incentive agreements.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Our aim is for the Sustainable Farming incentive (SFI) to enable as many farmers as possible to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices that support farm productivity whilst protecting and enhancing the natural environment. These include actions that focus on improving management of soils and nutrients. The 3-year agreement term in SFI supports this aim, building on recommendations from farming organisations and tenant farmers (including feedback from the Rock Review). Longer term 5- or 10-year agreements are also available in Countryside Stewardship for specific actions, to manage, restore or create important habitats like grassland or in coastal areas.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent in sustainable farming incentive payments excluding pilot schemes in the financial year 2022-2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The accounting treatment for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) means that spend on agreements that started in 2022/2023 falls under 2023/2024 budget. There is therefore no SFI spend recorded for financial year 2022/2023.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to ensure that farmers are able to (a) access and (b) use capital grants.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have a range of capital grant offers which are readily accessible to our farmers, foresters and land managers to help improve our environment by planting trees and hedges, reducing air pollution and improving water quality. We also offer opportunities for them to invest in the equipment, technology and infrastructure that will help their businesses to prosper, while improving their productivity and enhancing the environment. These grants will continue to be available next year.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department has taken to reduce the proportion of Grade 1 agricultural land at high risk of flooding.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As well as protecting more than 300,000 homes, the 2015-21 £2.6 billion flood investment programme worked with farmers to reduce the risk of flooding to nearly 600,000 acres of agricultural land. The 2021-27 capital programme will also offer increased protection to agricultural land. The Environment Agency does not break down the figure by land classification grade.
Current offers to support farmers include the Countryside Stewardship (CS) scheme, which supports farmers to improve water quality and manage flood risk through a range of grants and advice from Catchment Sensitive Farming. Support from the CS scheme to manage flood risk includes grants to reward farmers to control runoff and make space for water. The yearly breakdown of these costs is not centrally held.
We are also introducing our new environmental land management schemes, which reward environmental benefits, including protection from environmental hazards such as flooding.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding his Department has provided to farmers for the implementation of flood prevention solutions on their farms in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The six-year £5.2 billion floods investment programme is provided to Risk Management Authorities (RMAs) rather than providing funding directly to farmers. Although many RMAs work with farmers to reduce flood risk, we do not hold a central record for this information.
Current offers to support farmers include the Countryside Stewardship (Cs) scheme, which supports farmers to improve water quality and manage flood risk through a range of grants and advice from Catchment Sensitive Farming. Support from the CS scheme to manage flood risk includes grants to reward farmers to control runoff and make space for water. The yearly breakdown for the costs is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.