Research and analysis

Animal Health and Welfare Review uptake

Published 20 February 2025

Applies to England

1) Purpose

The Animal Health and Welfare Review (AHWR) funds annual veterinary advice for livestock farmers in England. The aim is to improve animal health and welfare nationally. This paper reports management information collected by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), describing the uptake of AHWR over 2 years since inception in Autumn 2022. Uptake data are published in the interests of transparency.

During the time considered an “Endemic-disease follow-up” option was added to AHWR (from 19 June 2024); 18 applications for the endemic-disease follow-up have been excluded.

2) Applications and claims

The data set analysed contains 9496 unique applications for AHWR; 8957 applications received between 27 October 2022 and 31 October 2024 (735 days), and 539 applications where the date received was missing. The (adjusted) status of the 9496 applications on 11 November 2024 is shown in Table 1; 5385 (57%) claims were paid between 18 November 2022 and 31 October 2024. For 5189 paid claims where the date received was not missing, the median time between receipt of application to payment of claim was 111 days (range 6 to 469). Paid claims are used to assess uptake as these indicate activity aiming to improve animal health and welfare has taken place on farm.

Table 1. Status of 9496 applications for AHWR on 2024-11-11

Status	Applications	Percent
Agreement live	2660	28
Application not started	233	2
Application started	59	1
Claim paid	5385	57
Claim started or submitted	109	1
Rejected	63	1
Verification check completed	52	1
Verification check outstanding	182	2
Withdrawn	753	8

Notes:

1. Status groups with the fewest applications combined to avoid reporting group sizes <6.

3) Eligible farm businesses in England

Farm businesses are eligible to claim for AHWR if they have > 10 cattle, >20 sheep, or > 50 pigs. Only 1 claim per farm business was possible during the first year since inception. The estimated number of unique farm businesses in England meeting at least 1 of these criteria on 1 June 2023 was 51546 (data sourced from the DEFRA June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture 2023). This refers to holdings with > 9 cattle, or > 19 sheep, or > 49 pigs (cut-off values set to match DEFRA definitions of commercial livestock farms).

The intention is that farm businesses with more than 1 species of livestock (holding) will eventually be eligible for AHWR on more than 1 count per year. Therefore, the denominator used for all paid claims, based on holdings is 65066 (data sourced from the DEFRA June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture 2023). This refers to holdings with > 9 cattle + holdings with > 19 sheep + holdings with > 49 pigs (i.e. a single farm business can be counted more than once).

The first record of a repeat AHWR claim paid to a farm business was on 7 December 2023 (over 1 year since earliest claim). As the aim of AHWR is to have at least 1 review per year per eligible holding, time periods have been selected to cover similar numbers of days, and to reflect the change in effective uptake eligibility over time.

4) Time periods for analysis

Period 1) 9 November 2022 to 8 November 2023 (1 year from first paid claim; 365 days)

Period 2) 9 November 2023 to 31 October 2024 (from end of Period 1 to day last claim paid in the data set; 356 days)

Table 2 shows uptake of AHWR first claims by farm businesses. Table 3 shows uptake of all AHWR claims by holding. Estimated uptake in Period 1 and Period 2 does not sum to a total estimate of uptake for unique farm businesses (Table 2) and/or unique holdings (Table 3) across both time periods combined. This is due to overlap between claims paid to the same farm businesses (Table 2) and/or holdings (Table 3) in Period 1 and Period 2. Section 5 gives more detail on the occurrence of repeated paid claims.

In time Period 2, 103 farm businesses had records of more than 1 AHWR claim paid (Table 2, Table 3).

Table 2. Uptake of AHWR first claims from 51546 eligible farm businesses

Period	Number of first claims paid	Estimated uptake (%)
Period 1	1089	2.1
Period 2	4193	8.1

Table 3. Uptake of all AHWR claims from 65066 eligible farm holdings

Period	Number of claims paid	Estimated uptake (%)
Period 1	1089	1.7
Period 2	4296	6.6

5) Tracking of repeated paid claims

Table 4 tracks the engagement of 4891 unique AHWR farm business claimants by number of claims paid in Period 1 (rows), against number of claims paid in Period 2 (columns). The maximum number of claims paid to a farm business in Period 2 was three (not shown as sample size <6).

Of 1089 claims paid to unique farm businesses in Period 1, 391 farm businesses (36%) also had at least one claim paid in Period 2. This could be for the same or a different species of livestock.

Table 4. Contingency table of numbers of claims paid in Period 1 (rows), against number of claims paid in Periods 2 (columns). Refers to 4891 unique farm businesses

	Period 2: Claims paid == 0	Period 2: Claims paid == 1	Period 2: Claims paid >= 2
Period 1: Claims paid == 0	0	3711	91
Period 1: Claims paid == 1	698	381	10

6) AHWR uptake by region

There were 130 claims (27 in Period 1, 103 in Period 2) paid to 122 farm businesses with no address or location details to define region. These were excluded from the analysis in this section.

Table 5 shows estimated uptake by farm business in each period. Multiple claims from the same farm businesses are not counted in Period 2 (e.g., only one claim per farm business is counted regardless of the number of livestock holdings present).

Estimates of eligible farm businesses are data sourced from the DEFRA June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture 2023.

Table 6 shows estimated uptake by farm holdings in each period. Multiple claims from the same farm businesses are counted in Period 2 (e.g., claims in different livestock holdings that are part of the same farm business).

Estimates of eligible farm holdings are data sourced from the DEFRA June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture 2023.

Table 5. Estimated uptake (percent) of first AHWR claims from 51546 unique eligible farm businesses by region of England

Region	Farm businesses	Period 1: First claims paid	Period 1: Estimated uptake (%)	Period 2: First claims paid	Period 2: Estimated uptake (%)
East	2752	58	2.1	188	6.8
East Midlands	5021	60	1.2	217	4.3
North East	2582	81	3.1	316	12.2
North West	7904	158	2.0	606	7.7
South East inc London	4999	98	2.0	342	6.8
South West	14057	376	2.7	1450	10.3
West Midlands	7488	117	1.6	422	5.6
Yorkshire and The Humber	6743	114	1.7	551	8.2

Notes:

1. Excludes 122 paid claims with no data defining region.

Table 6. Estimated uptake of AHWR claims from 65066 eligible farm holdings by region of England

Region	Farm businesses	Period 1: First claims paid	Period 1: Estimated uptake (%)	Period 2: First claims paid	Period 2: Estimated uptake (%)
East	3178	58	1.8	189	5.9
East Midlands	6196	60	1.0	221	3.6
North East	3717	81	2.2	328	8.8
North West	10449	158	1.5	627	6.0
South East inc London	5954	98	1.6	348	5.8
South West	17417	376	2.2	1480	8.5
West Midlands	9383	117	1.2	431	4.6
Yorkshire and The Humber	8772	114	1.3	569	6.5

Notes:

1. Excludes 130 paid claims with no data defining region (27 in Period 1, 103 in Period 2).

7) Cumulative uptake

Figure 1 shows the cumulative uptake of paid claims in Periods 1 and 2 (holding level).

Figure 1. Cumulative uptake of AHWR. All paid claims (percent of 65066 eligible holdings)

8) Uptake by species

Estimates of eligible farm businesses are data sourced from the DEFRA June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture (2023). Seven hundred and sixty-seven claims paid for “dairy cattle” (Period 1; 185, Period 2; 582) and 2588 claims paid for “beef cattle” (Period 1; 510, Period 2; 2078) were re-coded to “cattle” to match the June Survey denominator data to calculate uptake. Table 7 shows estimated uptake by species. Figure 2 shows uptake by species and region at holding level.

Table 7. Estimated uptake from 65066 eligible livestock holdings by species

Species	Holdings	Period 1: Claims paid	Period 1: Estimated uptake (%)	Period 2: Claims paid	Period 2: Estimated uptake (%)
Cattle	30052	695	2.3	2660	8.9
Pigs	2464	9	0.4	29	1.2
Sheep	32550	383	1.2	1169	3.6

Notes:

1. Excludes 440 claims (2 in Period 1, 438 in Period 2) with missing data defining species.

Figure 2. Paid claims for AHWR by species and region (percentage of the estimated number of eligible holdings)

Notes: 1. Groups with <6 holdings not shown. 2. Excludes 130 claims with missing data defining region and a further 430 claims with missing data defining species.

9) Statements of compliance with the code of conduct for statistics

Trustworthiness: The figures are based on operational management information collected by RPA.

Quality: This publication uses administrative data from RPA. Quality assurance has taken place to ensure the data is as accurate and reliable as possible.

Value: In publishing this data, we aim to support the information needs of society, parliamentarians, and stakeholders, and support transparency between DEFRA and the public.