The Capital Grants offer is now open for new applications. This new round will make £150 million of funding available to farmers to buy equipment or services that help them make farming and environmental improvements across England.
The Capital Grants offer is designed to support those who manage the land to enhance biodiversity, protect natural resources and improve the landscape. For example, farmers will be able to apply for funding to plant hedgerows for biodiversity or a range of measures to improve water quality such as new livestock equipment.
Capital Grants can be used to deliver standalone improvements or to complement existing Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), Countryside Stewardship (CS) or Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreements.
Farmers are now able to apply for funding for a total of 78 items, including planting hedgerows for biodiversity, introducing natural flood management measures, and measures to improve water quality such as new livestock equipment. Farmers can now also apply for four new capital items enabling farmers and land managers to assess woodland, create a wildfire checklist, repair stone walls and host educational visits. These changes have been introduced to ensure access to the grants is fairer, so more farm businesses can get funding at the same time as making sure Defra can more effectively manage taxpayers’ money.
You can apply for items in any of these groups. However, Defra are introducing funding limits for 4 groups:
- £25,000 for each of: water quality, air quality, and natural flood management
- £35,000 for boundaries, trees and orchards
Each application can include items from these groups up to the relevant limit, as well as additional items from the assessments and improvements groups. These changes do not apply to applications submitted in 2024, as it would not be fair to apply limits retrospectively. You can apply at any time during the year. However, we will only accept one successful application per Single Business Identifier (SBI) per calendar year.
You can find out more about Defra’s Capital Grants and how to apply in the farming blog here.
