Guidance

Mid Tier manual for 1 January 2018 agreements: Countryside Stewardship

Scheme rules for holders of agreements that started on 1 January 2018.

Applies to England

Documents

Mid Tier manual for 1 January 2018 agreements

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Countryside Stewardship agreements: modified terms and conditions effective from 1 January 2023

Mid Tier options, supplements and capital items 2017

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Mid Tier agreement value calculator

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Details

Effective from 1 January 2023: read the modified terms and conditions for Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier and Higher Tier agreements between 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020.

Use the manual to understand the rules and conditions that apply to Mid Tier (including water quality capital items) agreements.

Use the options, supplements and capital items document:

  • to understand the rules for each option, supplement and capital item
  • for advice on carrying out options, supplements and capital items

Use the calculator to work out the value of your agreement on the basis of your application. The total value of your agreement may be less if you’ve received correspondence from Natural England indicating that:

  • information included in your application is incorrect
  • options included in your application are ineligible so will not form part of your agreement

Use the Countryside Stewardship (CS) forms to support your agreement.

The manual has been designed with portrait and landscape pages. To make sure these print correctly, select ‘auto rotate’ in your printer settings before you print.

Overlap of CS options with Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs)

In 2018, you can overlap the following CS options with EFAs declared on your Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) 2018 application:

Your CS options that share land with BPS claims (known as ‘double funding’) will receive a reduced payment rate. You can find the rate in the page for each listed option, under ‘How much will be paid’, and in the manual (section 3.3.1).

From 1 January 2019, you will not be able to overlap the 18 CS ‘double funding’ options with EFAs declared for BPS. You can place the options and EFAs in the same land parcel but they cannot overlap.

You can include hedges in both CS options and EFAs without payment deductions.

Revenue claims

The deadline for Natural England to receive late revenue claims and amendments was 10 July 2018. Natural England will not accept any further revenue claims in 2018.

Contact

Contact Natural England if you have any queries:

Enquiries

Natural England
County Hall, Spetchley Road
Worcester
WR5 2NP

Email enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk

Telephone 0300 060 3900

March to September: call operating times are 10:00am to 4pm Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays)
October to February: call operating times are 10:00am to 3pm Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays)

Find out about call charges at www.gov.uk/call-charges.

Published 17 January 2018
Last updated 31 October 2022 + show all updates
  1. Modified terms and conditions and summary of changes have been published for Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier and Higher Tier agreements between 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020. These are effective from 1 January 2023.

  2. Passed 10 July deadline for late revenue claims and amendments.

  3. Deadline for late revenue claims is 10 July 2018.

  4. Agreement value calculator added.

  5. Section on 'Overlap of certain CS options with Ecological Focus Areas' added.

  6. Deadline for annual revenue claims extended to 15 June 2018.

  7. First published.