Countryside Stewardship - Important information regarding 2019 Applications

There are a large number of outstanding Countryside Stewardship applications currently with the RPA. These are applications which were put in during the Spring/Summer of 2019 with a start date of 1st January 2020.

If you did put an application in during the 2019 application window and haven’t yet received your agreement offer, it is essential that you still adhere to the rules under the scheme from 1st January 2020 on the assumption that you will be given an agreement. If we completed your application for you and you would like a reminder of the rules you will need to comply with from 1st January until you receive your agreement, please let us know.

Please watch out for emails from ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk with the subject “Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier: agreement offer”. These are supposed to come to the agent too but many haven’t this year, so if you receive the email (and we are dealing with your application) please forward it on to us and we will deal with it. There is a time limit for accepting the offer. Make sure you check your junk email regularly too, just in case!

We will be following up all of our outstanding applications with the RPA today, and if there is any individual update for your agreement following that we will let you know.