Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) Moorland
All common and non-common land above the moorland line is currently able to apply to SFI Moorland. Please go to Magic maps to see the location of the moorland line.
Defra policy is changing and instead of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) farmers will be paid to provide public goods such as improved water quality, biodiversity, soil, climate change mitigation, animal health and welfare.
One of the current schemes is the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) Moorland Introductory Action (M0R1) which from 2022 pays those who manage moorland, including on many upland commons, to undertake an Assessment so they can make informed choices about future schemes such as the higher tiers of SFI as well as Countryside Stewardship. It runs for three years. Here is a link to the information on the SFI Moorland Action on Defra’s gov.uk website
The SFI is the first of 3 new environmental schemes being introduced under the Agricultural Transition Plan. The other 2 schemes are Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery.
SFI aims to help farmers manage land in a way that improves food production and is more environmentally sustainable. This page aims to provide you with detailed information and resources to be able to apply and successfully undertake SFI Moorland:
Introduction
Farmers will be paid to provide public goods, such as:
improved water quality
biodiversity
climate change mitigation
animal health and welfare
SFI aims to:
encourage actions that improve soil health
recognise how moorland provides benefits to the public (public goods)
improve animal health and welfare by helping farmers with the costs of veterinary advice for livestock
SFI M0R1:
No change to stocking levels or management of the vegetation is required. The scheme is about those who farm and manage the land assessing what is on the moorland now and future opportunities for providing public goods through maintenance, enhancement, or restoration. The scheme has been designed so commoners can do the work themselves, you do not have to instruct professionals to undertake the surveying.
Assessment
To be involved in SFI M0R1, you must assess the assets you have on your common land. This involves three key steps. Click on each step for more information and details.
Meeting the Commons and Shared Grazing Eligibility Requirements
These steps must be undertaken before an application for SFI Moorland is made on the Rural Payments website for the SFI Moorland on a Common with more details from the government guidance.
Agree the Single Entity who will hold the SFI Moorland Agreement
If there is an exisiting HLS or CS Agreement it must be the same entity
Identify SBI numbers and relevant field parcel numbers
Notify all those with a legal interst in the land including commoners (graziers and non graziers) and the owner as well as any tenants icnluding sporting tenants.
Have sufficient ‘Management Control’ to undertake the scheme requirements. For more information on this, see the Management section of the Toolkit.
Document how delivery of the SFI will be achieved in an Internal Agreement.
Templates and tips on completing the eligibility requirements
The first step we recommend doing is digitalising the rights register. Please click on the following link to access the page in the Common land toolkit relevant to this.
Notifying all with a legal interest
As stated earlier you must notify all those with a legal interest in the land and writing to those in the register is the next step. The three templates immediately below are the letters for the graziers, the non-graziers and the owners. Please be advised that this process can sometimes take some time as you may find in some situations that rights registers are not as up to date as you would wish.
Alongside these letters we recommend sending a combined confirmation of rights and expression of interest form. A template can be found below. This is a critical step, especially if later you decide as an association to divide any payments based on the number of rights. We recommend pre-populating this form with what you believe the individual’s rights to be. When using this template please remember to change the columns to what is reflected in your common’s register. e.g If stints are used instead of sheep/cattle/ponies. This form also includes the question as to whether the person you are writing to would be interested in being one of the surveyors, this can be a good starting point at any later meeting.
The Common’s Association will ultimately decide what the minimum requirements are for participation e.g. Minimum number of meetings attended or minimum number of rights held.
Internal Agreement
Important point to note is that you need a new internal agreement for SFI Moorland which must be set up prior to application. This must be separate to your HLS/CS internal agreement. Below is a template internal agreement for you to download and adapt for your association. Alongside it is a How-to-guide and a set of FAQs.
Warning
You are welcome to adapt these templates as appropriate. However, it is your responsibility to use them appropriately and to ensure that you fulfil the requirements of SFI Moorland and your own specific circumstances. If you have any general queries or comments relating to these templates, please feel free to contact us. Please note that we are unable to provide professional or legal advice. We recommend you take advice from a qualified land agent or solicitor if you have a specific query relating to the use of these templates.
The Foundation for Common Land take no responsibility for any disputes or losses that may result from or be incurred by (whether directly or indirectly) the use of these templates.
Payment rates
After the January 2024 updates to SFI there are new payment rates for the SFI M0R1 action:
£10.60/ha - standard payment
£7.00/ha - commons supplement
£20/ha for up to 50 ha (maximum of £1000) -management payment
£272 per agreement
Possible Payment principles
It is completely up to your entity on how to divide up the money and there is no right or wrong way to do it. After subtracting the main costs we know of commons that have divided the remaining money equally and others that have divided the remaining by number or percentage of rights.
To help with the Internal Agreement and to hopefully reduce admin costs please see below a link to an Excel Spreadsheet with some examples of how you could divide up the money from SFI M0R1. There are already some formulas in place so you can adjust different numbers and that will change other numbers.
Payment principles examples - Excel Sheet
If you prefer working on paper below is a page that you can print out where you can work on the figures manually
Payment principles printout - PDF
Please note that we are unable to provide professional or legal advice. It is your responsibility to use the spreadsheet appropriately. If you have a specific query we recommend you take advice from a qualified land agent or a solicitor.
The Foundation for Common Land take no responsibility for any disputes or losses that may result from or be incurred by (whether directly or indirectly) the use of this spreadsheet
Foundation for Common Land (FCL) Digital Surveying App
FCL has a digital surveying app that is available for use nationwide on both common and non-common land to help those in the SFI M0R1 action undertake the surveying required. We have a specific page dedication to this that can be found by clicking below.
SSSI consent
You do not need SSSI consent for the SFI M0R1 action
Future combined offers
You can apply for SFI M0R1 now and later in the year you will be able to make a separate application for the new Moorland options in the combined CS/SFI offers. You can do this for the same land meaning the agreements are stackable and you do not need to wait till your annual mark to be able to upgrade.
FAQs on SFI Moorland
I am already signed up to SFI22 Moorland Standard - do I still have to do my survey even though the RPA will terminate my agreement this year
Yes, all SFI22 agreements are still live and so you will need to undertake your survey once in each year - the RPA will contact you about switching your SFI22 agreement to a SFI23 agreement
I hear SFI23 is now available on commons?
Yes, this is true. Following a successful beta trial with FCL, the RPA and three commons the controlled rollout of the SFI23 M0R1 action on common land has begun. All commons that submitted an expression of interest will be contacted in the order that they were submitted. If you have not done this then please email RPA at ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk with ‘SFI 2023 Commons/Shared Grazing Agreements’ in your subject line’’. Please see Applying for an SFI agreement on gov.uk.
If the commons application system is now off-line can I still use the FCL Digital Survey App
Yes, the FCL Digital Survey App is fully functional and can be used whether or not your agreement was set up off-line or online. Your Survey data is stored totally separately from your agreement. The FCL Digital App is a service run by FCL that is completely separate to the RPA.
I have been told by the RPA that my common is not eligible due to BPS issues. What do I do?
If you have been told by the RPA that your common is not eligible for M0R1 due to BPS issues then it is likely a mistake. Due to a computing miskake an email was sent out in October informing a large amount of commons that they could not apply to SFI. This was sent out by mistake and all those who were sent it should have been contacted to say this. If you are still being told this by the RPA it is likely because the agent who you are dealing with has not passed your question or case to the RPA commons team. In this case please send an email to sfi@foundationforcommonland.org.uk stating your SBI and customer name so we can bring this up to the commons team. We have dealt with this situation on three occassions and in all of them the customer was contacted within a day or two by the RPA to clarify that they were in fact eligible.
I have non common land Moorland - how do I apply?
Non common moorland can apply through the automated process as normal from the 18th September, please login to the Rural Payments service to begin your application.
Webinar
Below is our most recent webinar from 6th December 2023 discussing how to apply with staff from the RPA and the status of the digital tool
Road Testing of SFI Moorland: August 2022 to April 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. For more information about this, click below.