Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications were received for the Sustainable Farming Initiative between January and September 2023; and how many of those applications have been awarded as of 20 September 2023.

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) received a total of 1,855 applications for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme between January and September 2023. Of these, 1,487 farm businesses have accepted an offer of agreement. SFI closed for new applications in June 2023 and started accepting new applications from September 2023. As of 18 October 2023, the RPA had received 14,937 registrations of interest for SFI23.