Guidance

How to apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot

Updated 27 August 2021

This guidance was withdrawn on 7 October 2021

This page has been withdrawn because it’s out of date. For current information read: Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot guidance.

Applies to England

How to apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot

This guidance explains how to apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot using the Rural Payments service.

You must submit your Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot application by midnight on 30 September 2021.

Before you start

Before starting your application, read the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot guidance.

Use the ‘Help’ link on the Rural Payments service screens that take you through each stage of the online application process step-by-step.

Make sure your Rural Payments service details are up to date

Before you make your application, you must make sure that all the information about you, your business and your land on the Rural Payments service is up to date.

Sign in to the Rural Payments service to check this information. You can check the Countryside Stewardship guidance about signing in and updating your details if you need help.

These details will be used to make your agreement and calculate payments.

Read the Piloting the Sustainable Farming Incentive: making an application for guidance on what to check and update on the Rural Payments service.

Setting permissions

You need Environmental Land Management ‘Submit’ permission to apply.

This permission allows you to see ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ on your ‘Business overview’ page when you sign in to the Rural Payments service.

If you submitted the Expression of Interest to take part in the pilot and have ‘Business details: Full’ permission for the business this ‘Submit’ permission has been automatically set.

If you don’t have ‘Full’ permission for the business, but one person in the business does, they automatically have ‘Submit’ permission. You may need to ask this person to give you Environmental Land Management ‘Submit’ permission.

If you don’t have ‘Full’ permission for the business, but multiple people do, one person with ‘Full’ permission for the business needs to contact the Rural Payments Agency to ask for Environmental Land Management ‘Submit’ permission to be set for that person. They can then give you ‘Submit’ permission in the Rural Payments service.

To contact the Rural Payments Agency, you can:

• email ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk (use the subject line: ‘SFI pilot – permission’)
• telephone 03000 200 301

The pilot uses the same process as Countryside Stewardship to update Rural Payments service permissions. If you want to give someone else permission to submit the application on your behalf, check the Countryside Stewardship guidance about updating your permission levels.

Get a report about historic and archaeological features

You must download a Sustainable Farm Incentive Historic Environment Farm Environment Record (SFI HEFER) before you make your application.

This will tell you about any historic and archaeological features on your land. It will also tell you how they affect the actions you can take under the standards. For example, you must not plant trees on historic sites.

You’ll need your SBI to use the service.

Get an SFI HEFER report for your land.

If any of the actions you take as part of your agreement will affect a scheduled monument, you’ll need written consent from the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. Read the guidance about protecting scheduled monuments .

 Making your application

To make an application, you will initially need to:

• confirm you are eligible for the pilot scheme
• add land parcels you want to include in your application

After that, you’ll need to:

• choose standards and ambition levels to apply to the land parcels
• make a declaration and agree to certain undertakings
• submit your application by 30 September 2021

Getting started

After you’ve signed in to the Rural Payments service, select View business. On the ‘Business overview’ screen, select Environmental Land Management.

From there, select Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements.

Create your application

Select Apply for a Sustainable Farming Incentive Pilot Application to create your application.

When your application is successfully created a ‘Successful’ message will appear. Scroll down the message and select Back to return to the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen.

If you do not see a ‘Successful’ message, contact the Rural Payments Agency.

Open your application

After you’ve successfully created your application, it will show on the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen with its own application number. The status will be ‘Application Not Yet Submitted’.

Select Open to start adding details to your application. On the next screen, select Edit your Application to see the options for adding details to your application.

Confirm you are eligible

Under ‘Edit your Application’, you should select Eligibility first.

The eligibility declarations screen will now display. If you agree that you meet the eligibility criteria, select Yes and then select Close to save the changes.

Add land parcels

You now need to add the land parcels to be included in your application.

Under ‘Edit your application’, select Parcels Under Agreement.

Select Import parcels to open a window with a list of all the land parcels under your Single Business Identifier (SBI).

You’ll see a list of all parcels associated with your SBI using the latest live parcel information. If a land parcel is missing, read the guidance on making changes to your application.

Select Import all parcels to add all the land parcels associated with your SBI to your application, or add individual land parcels by selecting Add next to each land parcel you want to include.

After you’ve added a land parcel, the ‘Add’ button changes to ‘Remove’. Select Remove to take land parcels out of your application.

Select Close to return to the ‘Environmental Land Management applications and agreements’ screen. Select Parcels under Agreement to view a list of land parcels you’ve added to your application.

Your list of land parcels may extend over 2 or more pages depending on the number of land parcels you have. The number of pages shows at the bottom of the list. Select the single arrow to move to the next page of the list.

You should review the list of land parcels. Land that is already in an agri-environment agreement or that’s been included in an application submitted this year is not eligible for the pilot scheme.

A warning may show next to a land parcel already included in another Countryside Stewardship application or agreement. Do not select ‘Remove all parcels with warnings’. Do not select the ‘individual warning’ next to the land parcel as that information is not relevant.

Warnings will not show for land parcels in an existing Environmental Stewardship agreement.

Some warnings are currently showing incorrectly against land parcels that are not in a Countryside Stewardship agreement or application. You can still include these land parcels in your SFI pilot application if they are eligible. The warnings do not prevent you from submitting your application.

You can select Remove to remove any land parcels from your application.

Once all the parcels you want to include in the application are shown in the list, select Close to save the changes and return to the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen.

Continue with your application

On the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen, select Continue under ‘Make/ manage your application’.

A ‘successful’ message will appear if you’ve confirmed ‘Eligibility’ and added land parcels to your application. Scroll down the message and select Back.

If a ‘failed’ message is shown, your application cannot move onto the next stage. The onscreen message should tell you why your application has failed to progress and what you need to do to rectify this.

To continue with your application, select Open to return to the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements screen.

Select standards, ambition level and quantity

Under ‘Edit your Application’, select Standard selection.

This shows a list of the assets (for example, hedgerows, water bodies such as streams and ditches, unimproved grassland and more) and the standards that are currently available.

Select the title of each standard for a description of how that standard will improve the environment.

To select a standard, select Open. You will then see the 3 ambition levels available for that standard - these are introductory, intermediate, advanced (except for the farm woodland standard). You’ll also see the value of a unit (for example, per hectare, per tree, per year) of the standard and any additional payment under each ambition level.

To apply that standard to a land parcel, select Open for the relevant ambition level. You can only use one ambition level in the standard selected.

To choose a different standard, select Back to Select Standards.

Changes to soils standards

The ‘Arable and horticultural soils standard’ and ‘Improved grassland soils standard’ under the pilot have been updated since their publication in March 2021. They will be the same in both the pilot and early rollout of the Sustainable Farming Incentive from 2022. Read the updated soils standards guidance for details of the revised actions and indicative payment rates.

The application screens have been updated to show the revised actions and indicative payment rates. The additional payments are still showing, but the payment rate is set to £0.00 per ha because the actions associated with these payments are now included in the core actions. You don’t need to include any information for these.

There may be further adjustments to these soils standards and indicative payment rates before pilot agreements start from October 2021. If you include a soils standard in your pilot application, your agreement will include the finalised rates.

Applying a standard and ambition level to a land parcel

Once you’ve selected a standard and ambition level, where relevant, you’ll see a list of the land parcels you’ve added to your application that are eligible for that standard.

If a land parcel you’ve added to your application does not appear in the list for the standard you’ve selected, this means the standard and the land use (declared as at 17 May 2021) cannot be used together. For area-based options, the area shown for a land parcel may be less than its total size if the standard is only compatible with the land use declared for part of the land parcel, for example, arable.

You can select the land parcels you want to apply the standard to:

• individually from the list on the screen in the ‘Applied for’ or the ‘Parcels used’ column
• by choosing ‘Select All’
• by searching for a specific land parcel by adding the land parcel number and selecting Search (you may need to scroll to the right to see the search button)

If you make a mistake and want to start again, select Clear all.

You can see which parcels have been selected for the standard and ambition level – shown with a tick in the checkbox under the ‘Applied for’ or ‘Parcel used’ column.

Declare quantity

If you need to declare a quantity, scroll right to add the relevant quantity (hectares, metres or trees) to the ‘Declare Quantity’ box at the top right of the screen.

For the hedgerows and water buffering standards, you need to declare the overall, total length in metres, not individual lengths for the land parcels selected. You will need to calculate this yourself.

The ‘0’ does not automatically overwrite in the ‘Declare Quantity’ box. You should always check that you’ve entered the correct amount. For example, if you type ‘10’, it will appear as ‘100’.

For the hedgerows standard, you may need to submit an RLE1 form if the total length declared is more than the total length of hedges shown on your digital maps in the Rural Payments service.

Under the farm woodland standard, there are 2 additional payments: ‘Woodland Condition Assessment’ and ‘Woodland Threat Awareness’ that show as ‘Payment per Year’. These are actually one-off payments. If you’re choosing either of these, enter ‘1’ in the ‘Declare Quantity’ box.

After you’ve selected the land parcels you want to apply the standard to and added the declared quantity, where required, scroll down and select Save, then ‘Back’. If you do not see save, scroll to the left. Do not select Close as your changes will not be saved and you will be returned to the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen.

You will see what you’ve included in your application for that standard and ambition level.

• ‘Actions’ select in this column to see what actions you need to deliver to meet the standard
• ‘Application’ column shows the value per unit of what you’ve selected - for the 2 soils standards this will be an indicative payment rate
• ‘Quantity Applied For’ column shows the area or length of what you’ve applied for

If you want to clear all the changes you’ve made, select the blue ‘Reset’ button on the level selection screen.

To select more standards, scroll down and select Back to Select Standards. Do not select Close as that will take you back to ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen.

Agree to the declarations and undertakings

Under ‘Edit your Application’, select Declarations and Undertakings.

The declarations outline what you should understand and agree to before taking part in the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot. The undertakings outline what you need to do to take part in the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot scheme.

You should read them carefully - you must agree to the declarations and undertakings or you will not be able to submit your application.

Select Yes to agree to the declaration and undertakings.

Select ’Close’ to save the changes and return to the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen.

 Add an agreement name

To make it easier for you to identify the agreement, give your application a name such as the name of the land or the farm.

From the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen, select Agreement Name.

Enter an Agreement name into the box and then select Save and Close (not ‘Back’) to return to the previous screen.

Check your application

Before you submit your application, it’s important to check it.

Select View and print your application summary. Select Generate and then ‘Download’ to view your application summary. This includes the standard and ambition level selected, the area or length, the land parcels selected for each standard, the estimated annual payment value for the standards. The pilot participation fee shows as £0 as that information will be included in your agreement offer.

Check all the information shown in the application summary carefully. If you need to make changes, select Edit your application on the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen. Then ‘Generate’ and ‘Download’ another application summary to show the updated information.

Submit your application

Now that all the sections are complete, you need to submit your application. The application submission deadline is midnight on 30 September 2021.

From the ‘Environmental Land Management applications and agreements’ screen, select Make/ manage your application. Select SUBMIT.

You can also select WITHDRAW if you do not want to go ahead with your application at this point. This deletes all of the changes you have entered. If you withdraw your application, you can create a new one to start again.

If a ‘failed’ message is shown, it will tell you why your application has failed to submit so that you can amend the application. Select Back to return to the Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements screen and select ‘Open’ to return to the Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements screen to check you have:

• selected standards and ambition levels
• agreed to the declarations and undertakings

Once you are satisfied that you have checked and updated all the details, select Make/ manage your application. Select SUBMIT to submit the application.

If the application has submitted successfully, you will see a ‘successful’ message. You can print this confirmation for your records.

Select Back to return to the Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ page. This will show your application status as ‘Submitted’ with the date and time of submission.

If you need to change your submitted application, read the guidance on making changes to your application.

View and print application summary

You can save or print your submitted application summary for your records.

On the ‘Environmental Land Management Applications and Agreements’ screen, select Open. Select View and print your application summary. Select Generate and then ‘Download’ to view your application summary.

Contact the RPA

If you have a query about the application process, send an email with ‘SFI pilot’ in the subject line to ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk. You can also call 03000 200 301 Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5pm, except bank holidays. Find out about call charges.

Further information

See all the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot guidance.