Supporting documents and evidence
Read this section to find out about the supporting documents and evidence you must submit
We must receive your claim and any supporting documents/evidence by the ‘Claim by’ date given in your agreement document. We cannot accept late claims, they will be rejected.
You can find details of the supporting documents you need to send with your claim on the Countryside Stewardship grants page. Search for each capital item you’ve claimed for and read the ‘Keeping Records’ section for each of these. You can also find details in the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK
All invoices you submit must be signed and dated by the contractor to prove they have received your payment. This is known as ‘receipted’.
Proof of payment can be any of the following:
- till receipts
- internet purchased receipts
- bank and or credit card statements where necessary
- schedule of works/timesheets, where you have used your own labour/machinery and none of the above are available.
Full payment must have left your bank account before you submit your Capital claim, so the date of receipting (on invoices) and/or transaction date (on other eligible proof of payment) must be before the Capital claim submission date.
For more information read the ‘Evidence required to support your claim’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK.
All photographs (digital and paper) must meet the standards set out in the ‘Photographic evidence’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK.
Use the Ordnance Survey (OS) map sheet reference and National Grid reference for the field parcel, followed by the relevant proposed or implemented option or capital item code and, if more than one image is required, the image number.
The OS map sheet reference and National Grid reference should relate to the field parcel on which the feature, multi-year management option or capital item is sited or for boundary features the adjacent field parcel. For example, if you need to take before and after photographs to show evidence that works have taken place for Gateway relocation (RP2), label the image as XX12345678_ RP2_1 and XX12345678_RP2_2. If there is no relevant land parcel reference, include a clear identifiable description such as Farmyard_RP22_1.
Save digital images under the label outlined above. If posting printed photographs, clearly write the label on the reverse of each one, detailing the Ordnance Survey (OS) map sheet reference and National Grid reference for the field parcel, the implemented capital item code, date, Agreement Holder name and SBI.
To send by email
Scan your supporting documents/evidence and email them to ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk using ‘CS Capital Claim Evidence_[Your SBI]_[Claim Reference, if known]’ as the email subject heading.
Make sure your emails are not over 32MB as this is the largest email size we can receive.
Do not include links to cloud storage, for example Dropbox or Google Drive, as we cannot accept documents or evidence this way.
For security reasons, do not send discs, USB pen drives or other external storage media.
You can send digital photos by email, but do not send scans of printed photos as the quality is not good enough. Read the ‘Photographic Evidence Quality’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK for more information.
To send by post
You can also send supporting documents/evidence by post to:
Rural Payments Agency
(Countryside Stewardship)
PO Box 324
Worksop
S95 1DF
Remember to put your SBI, agreement number on all documents and, where possible, include the claim reference.
We recommend you get proof of postage.