Is Defra putting its flagship Landscape Recovery scheme at risk?
Farmers and land managers are reeling from the discovery that the government could back out of Landscape Recovery schemes with only one year’s notice, saying this threatens the whole enterprise.
The Landscape Recovery scheme is meant to be the government’s most ambitious environmental programme for restoring wilder landscapes and supporting nature-friendly farming. It seeks to create change across whole areas, by bringing together clusters of farmers and landowners to propose joined-up plans which will improve habitats on a large scale and for the long-term. These are touted as 20-30 year projects.
Projects across the country have formed and spent years working up pioneering and collaborative proposals for landscape recovery.
Yet some have recently received their Project Implementation Agreement and discovered it contains a clause which allows the government to terminate their contract for convenience, with no fault attached, with only 12 months notice.
Farmers and landowners tell me that this puts the whole scheme at risk – it offers no security and seriously undermines trust.
How can farmers invest in making significant changes to their land use, which might involve a huge capital outlay and restructuring of their business, if they can’t have confidence that Defra will follow through on their side of the bargain? As one farmer told me, “If the rug could be pulled after 12 months, that’s untenable”.
It’s also a block to private investment because it makes the schemes less investible. Without guaranteed payment terms from the government, the scheme is vulnerable to the whims of political change, and private finance won’t have the necessary security to invest. This is a problem, given the government promotes Landscape Recovery as a ‘blended finance’ model, expecting it to attract significant private funds.
I put these points to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and in response a spokesperson said: “We are committed to the long term restoration of nature-rich habitats and supporting farmers and landowners, through the Landscape Recovery Scheme.”
They added that it is standard practice for government contracts to include a Termination for Convenience notice period, and many agri-environment schemes include termination for convenience notice periods of three or six months. The notice period for Termination for Convenience in Landscape Recovery has been extended to 12 months.
This will be cold comfort for farmers and landowners and represents an existential threat to efforts towards nature recovery.