Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his policy is on the future of the light-touch element of the Countryside Stewardship scheme.
In our consultation document ‘Health and Harmony’ we confirmed that we will continue to run a simplified Countryside Stewardship scheme until we introduce a new environmental land management scheme after we leave the EU. We plan to continue to offer in 2019 the four simplified farm wildlife packages that we have made available in 2018. We wish to improve the experience for applicants for Countryside Stewardship further and will confirm further steps as part of our response to the consultation.