Guidance: Higher Tier manual for 1 January 2017 agreements: Countryside Stewardship

Updated: Passed 10 July deadline for late revenue claims and amendments.

Use the manual and addendum to understand the rules and conditions that apply to Countryside Stewardship (CS) agreements.

Use the options, supplements and capital items documents:

  • to understand the rules for each option, supplement and capital item
  • for advice on carrying out options, supplements and capital items

Mid Tier options, supplements and capital items which can be included as part of a Higher Tier application.

Use the terms and conditions document to understand the rules of the scheme.

Use the conversion guidance document to know how to convert land in year nine (of a ten year) Higher Level Stewardship to Higher Tier.

Use the record keeping document to understand what evidence you need to keep to show you’re meeting scheme requirements.

Use the Countryside Stewardship forms to support your agreement.

The manual has been designed with portrait and landscape pages. To make sure these print correctly, select ‘auto rotate’ in your printer settings before you print.

Overlap of CS options with Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs)

In 2018, you can overlap the following CS options with EFAs declared on your Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) 2018 application:

Your CS options that share land with BPS claims (known as ‘double funding’) will receive a reduced payment rate. You can find the rate in the page for each listed option, under ‘How much will be paid’, and in the manual (section 3.3.1).

From 1 January 2019, you will not be able to overlap the 19 CS ‘double funding’ options with EFAs declared for BPS. You can place the options and EFAs in the same land parcel but they cannot overlap.

You can include hedges in both CS options and EFAs without payment deductions.

Revenue claims

The deadline for Natural England to receive late revenue claims and amendments was 10 July 2018. Natural England will not accept any further revenue claims in 2018.

Contact

Contact Natural England for help with your agreement.

Enquiries

Natural England
County Hall, Spetchley Road

Worcester

WR5 2NP

Opening times: 8:30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays)

Find out about call charges at www.gov.uk/call-charges.