Guidance

Check how applications will be prioritised

Updated 12 March 2024

Applies to England

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will run the Slurry Infrastructure grant over multiple years. This will give as many farmers as possible the chance to upgrade their slurry systems.

Not everyone who is eligible for a grant will get one in the first round of the scheme. If the scheme is oversubscribed, RPA will limit the number of farmers invited to submit a full application. This prevents overloading suppliers and driving up costs.

RPA will do this by giving priority to projects that will most benefit the environment, based on their location. Defra has prioritised areas that need coordinated action to reduce air and water pollution from agriculture.

You can view the priority areas using MAGIC. MAGIC is an interactive mapping tool that provides information on rural, urban, coastal and marine areas across Great Britain. From the table of contents you should select:

• Land-Based Schemes
• Other Schemes
• Slurry Infrastructure Grant - Round 1 (England)

If your project is not chosen in the first year or you are not ready to apply yet, there will be more opportunities to apply.

How priority areas were chosen for round 1

The Slurry Infrastructure grant aims to help farmers make improvements that benefit the environment by reducing water and air pollution.

When organic nutrients held in slurry and manures end up in rivers and other water sources, they cause effects like eutrophication which limits wildlife. Agriculture accounts for up to 60% of nitrate pollution and 25% of phosphate pollution in waterways. Insufficient or poorly constructed and maintained slurry stores are a key contributor.

Ammonia emitted into the air also harms wildlife. Emissions can be deposited as nitrogen onto land and water surfaces, damaging sensitive natural habitats and causing soil acidification. Agriculture accounts for 87% of UK ammonia emissions. Livestock farming and management of organic manures, including the storage and use of slurries, are big contributors.

The Slurry Infrastructure Grant - Round 1 target areas on MAGIC reflect this. The layer uses multiple datasets to show locations where action is most urgently needed to reduce the impact of farming on protected sites. These protected sites contain some of our most precious habitats, species and biodiversity. They include:

• sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs)
• Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)
• Special Protection Areas (SPAs)
• wetlands designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention (or Ramsar sites)

The Slurry Infrastructure Grant - Round 1 layer combines areas identified in air quality and water quality maps to show places RPA will prioritise.

Air quality priority areas

RPA will prioritise areas which are within 2km of protected sites that both:

• contain a known feature sensitive to atmospheric ammonia
• currently exceed their atmospheric ammonia critical level (the threshold at which adverse effects are known to occur for the sensitive feature)

Exceedance of an SSSI’s ammonia critical level is more likely to occur where ammonia emissions are high near the site. Covering slurry stores within 2km of sensitive SSSIs currently exceeding their critical level will achieve a significant impact on reducing the negative effects of ammonia pollution.

Water quality priority areas

RPA will prioritise the 2014 Countryside Stewardship water quality priority areas (CS14), updated to include a small number of new sites that have diffuse water pollution issues.

Natural England and the Environment Agency chose these areas by identifying waters that are polluted or at risk of pollution and where agricultural activity is at least one of the reasons for this.

How RPA shortlisting will work

Applicants will be asked to give an Ordnance Survey grid reference for the proposed slurry store in the online checker.

When the online checker closes, RPA will look at how many projects can be awarded a grant.

If demand is high, RPA will plot each project against the priority area using the Ordnance Survey grid references.

This will produce a shortlist of projects based on the priority areas.

If there are still too many projects, RPA will select the highest priorities for water and focus on the air quality sites at most risk of damage by ammonia or nitrogen deposition.

Defra and RPA will explain how this is done on the Future Farming blog.

RPA will tell all applicants if their project has been shortlisted or not.

Changes to prioritised areas in future years of the scheme

RPA will support as many farmers as possible by adapting the approach to targeting in future rounds of the Slurry Infrastructure grant.