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 potential merits of increasing the speed of the roll out of the Environmental Land Management Scheme.

Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes remain at the centre of our offer for farmers and nature, putting us on the path to a more resilient and sustainable farming sector.

The Department now has more than half of farmers in an ELM scheme, including over 44,500 Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreements. It is our ambition to reopen SFI in the first half of 2026. Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier opened for applications in September 2025 through a controlled rollout. Two pioneering Landscape Recovery projects have now started long-term delivery on the ground.

We are on track to spend the committed £1.8bn, the largest figure ever, on ELM schemes in 2025/26.