Road Testing of SFI Moorland: August 2022 to July 2023

 In July 2022 the Foundation for Common Land (FCL)  was awarded a contract with DEFRA to undertake a unique Test and Trial (T&T). We will be Road Testing SFI22 Moorland Standard on three upland Commons. The findings of the T&T will feedback directly to the policy team to inform the development of a new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELM) in England.

The T&T will work with a range of stakeholders from a mix of commons to test at scale the SFI Moorland and Rough Grazing Standard over the summer / autumn of 2022 and winter of 2022/2023. This will involve Commons Associations undertaking the full requirements of SFI Standard across their whole management unit, working with the owner of common land where appropriate.   Before receiving any funds the Commons Association will need to sign an agreement with FCL to committ to complete the standard. Paymnets will be made in four equal quarterly payments.  We will compare commoners undertaking the work themselves with using external contractors where appropriate.

The Foundation for Common Land will during the T&T liaise with Natural England’s technical team providing tools for SFI moorland and with the relevant RPA teams as well as the appropriate Defra Policy teams.

The Final Report will address the following questions for Defra: 

• Does the Moorland Standard work for commoners?

• What has worked well?

• What has not worked well?

• How can the challenges be overcome/ what is the solution? 

• Is the payment rate sufficiently attractive to incentivise commoners to participate?

• Can NEs assessment tool be integrated?

• This will also contain the findings from the interim reports

• An assessment of the costs of delivering the Moorland and Commons Standards

• Draft Guidance Notes uploaded to FCL’s online Common Land Toolkit

• Recommendations to enhance engagement and uptake

The Road Testing activities will:

• Explore how SFI moorland data can be easily recorded in the field and collated digitally to include sampling, recording and opportunity assessment:

• Trial the simplest way to collect data in the field and record it digitally and perhaps also on paper depending on field constraints including weather and limited mobile signal. Explore use of additional types of guidance such as Natural England’s traffic light system

• Test delivery via:

  • Commoners / landowners undertaking assessment themselves

  • If appropriate the Association Contracting part of the assessment to a third-party delivery partner

• Testing the indicative fixed and variable payment rates based on costing real life observation, discussion, and feedback

• Agree ‘internal’ agreements for delivery of the SFI Moorland responsibilities:. A customisable agreement will be provided to the facilitators to adjust for each participating common

  • Creating a live register and deciding who particiaptes in the agreements

  • Who will undertake the assessment and what are they paid?

  • Who reviews the assessment?

  • How is the data stored and shared?

  • Is there a general distribution of funds to commoners and the owner and if so on what basis does this happen? 

New Digital Tools for the SFI Moorland Assessment

We are keen to make available to Common Associations and other moorland managers the most up to date digital tools to help collect data in the field and bring together the field data with other available information in a format that can be accessed by all with a stake in the common. 

The Foundation for Common Land has therefore, with the funding from Defra, commissioned the Land App to develop digital tools which will:

1.    Create the Survey Grid: Create the online grid points on Land App as required by SFI Moorland being 1 survey point for every 10 ha each year for three years (in each year they visit a separate but nearby point).                        

2.    Enable the uploading of a photo to a mapping package; Geo-tagged Photos linked to where they were taken. When you arrive at the survey point you can take a photo on your phone via the Land App and it automatically uploads into your map. 

3.    Provide an online form for collecting the data required by the SFI directly in the field– The Recording Template: We will provide the Defra Moorland survey form in a drop down format on the Land App or an Open Source recording form. This will allow for the easy field recording of the required survey data as well as the ability to choose one of 10 moorland UK Habitat codes. 

4.    Export Field Data to the SFI spreadsheet for identifying public goods  The ability to export point survey data to the Natural England’s SFI Spreadsheet for collation of the extent and quality of the public goods and the opportunities for maintaining, enhancing and restoring public goods. 

5.    Provision of Training Materials in document, web and video format. These will be stored on FCL’s Common Land Toolkit. We will also run national webinars that will be stored on our YouTube channel for reference.

6. Linking to Other Data Sources: Provide a mechanism to bring together the SFI field survey data with other data sources in shape file format including public data sources and other field data to provide a high quality best estimate habitat map