As part of the agricultural transition away from the European Union (EU), we’re committed to delivering a better regulation system for farming. At the moment, farmers who receive payments under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and some other agri-environment schemes must meet minimum standards to receive those payments. This is known as cross compliance. Cross compliance will end 31 December 2023. We've published guidance about what this means for farmers and land managers on GOV.UK.
In June, we launched a consultation on hedgerow protections in England. With 2 weeks to go before the consultation closes, I wanted to remind you that there’s still time for you to help shape future regulations so that they work for wildlife, the environment and farmers.
Some farming and land management activities are regulated to safeguard our environment and to protect the health of animals, plants and people. We do this through around 150 pieces of legislation, comprising primary and secondary legislation. All of this legislation applies to agricultural activity, and collectively constitutes what is known as the ‘regulatory baseline for agriculture’. This is a complex legislative picture and is not easy to navigate – we intend to improve and evolve this baseline in future as part of our agricultural transition outside of the European Union (EU).
We ran some co-design workshops in November with farmers and other experts to help us work out how the regulatory system needs to change. We shared the outputs of that work on the blog. After those workshops, we began planning the next phase of our co-design work on regulation. I’d like to share our progress in this post.
