Recommendation 16

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

The Government acknowledges the Committee’s concern around the closure of the Capital Grants scheme without notice, in November 2024. This decision was guided by financial and operational factors which dictated our communications approach. In Autumn 2024, we saw unprecedented demand for capital grants compared to previous years which risked unsustainable spending. The decision to close the main capital window helped to ensure further spending went towards the most benefit for food security and nature. At the NFU Conference in February 2025, the Secretary of State Steve Reed confirmed that the Capital Grants offer would reopen with funding in summer 2025. We have delivered on this promise and the Secretary of State announced the opening of Capital Grants offer on 3 July 2025 at Groundswell Regenerative Agricultural Festival. This makes £150 million of funding available to farmers to buy equipment or services that help them make farming and environmental improvements across England. We will monitor the uptake of the revised Capital Grants offer to ensure funding in this new round is allocated. We will manage the total farming budget carefully to make it go further to attain our goals for farmers and Government. We have been clear in our guidance and communications to farmers that this round will also close to applications when the available funding is committed. At the point of closure, we will not accept any further applications including those started but not yet submitted. We will aim to give reasonable notice of scheme closure, but this may not be possible. All communications with the farming sector are evaluated using the Government Communications Service Evaluation Cycle, which is a framework for measuring success across all communication activities, promoting continuous learning and innovation while integrating best practices for better impact and future planning. The Government is committed to delivering correspondence to farmers and land managers which provides a clear, respectful tone of voice and is working with our arm’s length bodies to drive greater co-ordination in communications. The Government also carries out a regular survey tracking the opinions of farmers about Defra’s vision for farming, business planning, relationships with farming groups and Defra and the future of farming. Our latest results show that over half (53%) of farmers say they have most or all the information they need to inform their business planning. The Government is keen to maintain trust within the farming sector. That is why we are committed to ensuring the 25-year Farming Roadmap reflects the views and needs of stakeholders across the farming and countryside sectors, which will provide a vision for our farming sector and set the direction for how we get there. The Government continues to engage with farmers, industry representatives, environmental organisations and rural communities to inform the development of the Roadmap. This collaborative approach will help ensure that the vision is both ambitious and achievable and that it supports a resilient and productive farming sector.