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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the effect of the complexity of the rules and requirements for applications under LEADER 5 on the take-up of that scheme.

All 80 LEADER Local Action Groups have started to invite applications for funding. The total LEADER budget for 2014-20 is £138 million.

Since the LEADER Programme was launched in October 2015, 1,629 outline applications, worth £51.3 million, have been received. 974 projects have been endorsed to go to full application, with a potential value of almost £30 million. 306 full applications have been received seeking £7.7 million and 83 applications have been approved with a value of almost £2.3 million.