The government has widened support offered to farmers hit by flooding and exceptional wet weather.
New eligibility criteria in the £50m Farming Recovery Fund has opened up the scheme to thousands more farmers who have suffered significant damage to their land as a result of wet weather.
The fund originally opened in April providing grants between £500 and £25,000 to those hit by Storm Henk floods. However, it was widely criticised for not offering support to enough farmers.
The original criteria limited the fund to those affected by Storm Henk in 10 counties and initially only covered agricultural land within 150 metres of government-specified rivers, though this was scrapped shortly after the fund was launched.
The scheme will now include a wider geographical area of farmers who suffered river flooding and will cover those who have experienced damage due to extreme rainfall.
It has been welcomed by the NFU as “really good news”.
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“Against the backdrop of some of the most challenging commercial and weather conditions in living memory, which has resulted in plummeting business confidence, these measures will provide some critical relief to many member businesses which have been facing a very uncertain future because of exceptional cashflow pressures,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
The government said it was an “exceptional, one-off intervention to respond to the exceptionally wet conditions”.
The Rural Payments Agency will identify farmers who are eligible for the payment and contact them with payments expected to be made to eligible farmers this summer.
There will be a flat rate payment, set in bands according to farm size, with a minimum payment of £2,895 and a maximum of £25,000.
The government has also brought forward the second instalment of this year’s delinked payment, which will now be paid from September, helping all farmers with cash flow following the impact of wet weather. This will follow the first instalment, which is due to be paid from 1 August.
“The measures announced today will not solve all the issues we’re facing on farm, but I am confident they will go some way to lifting some of the immediate strain on family farms and help farmers and growers to get back to doing what they do best – producing high-quality, sustainable food for the British people,” said Bradshaw on Friday.
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