Guidance on actions and payment rates for Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) applications and details of preparation plans and permissions required ahead of applications opening in summer 2025 have now been published.
In what some might see as a desperate attempt at getting some positive news out to the industry before Christmas, Defra have now published quite a lot of detail for anyone considering the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier when applications open in summer 2025. There are a total of 99 base actions to choose from, and 33 ‘supplementary actions’ which are only available if you are also doing the base action they are related to, the same as some of the SFI 2024 option supplements.
Many actions are for 5 years, but some are for 10,15 or up to 20 years.
Going to the following link allows you to look at how things will work and you can also look at Annex A, summary of options and payment rates and Annex B, summary of capital grants and payment rates.
As there will be quite a lot of preparation required, there is grant aid available now to help with such work. Annex B gives more detail about these grants for plans.
Preparing for CSHT using capital grants
You may be required to prepare a feasibility study or plan before you can apply for CSHT. You can prepare plans before you receive pre-application advice.
For example, for woodland applications, you must prepare a woodland management plan and may need to prepare a species management plan.
Each CSHT action will tell you if you need a plan in place as part of your pre-application preparation. You can apply for the following standalone capital grants to help fund your plan. You can apply through the existing capital grants application process for these items:
PA1: Implementation plan – may be required to plan what you need to do to create or restore habitats or features
PA2: Feasibility study – may be required to plan what you need to do to create or restore habitats or features
PA3: Woodland management plan – required for woodland actions and some capital items
PA4: Agroforestry plan – required for agroforestry actions and relevant capital items
PA5: Moorland mapping – useful to map your moorland and record important habitats and features to plan the management actions and capital items for them
PA7: Species management plan – may be required to plan management actions and some capital items to control invasive species, such as grey squirrels
These plans will help you decide which CSHT actions are most suitable to apply for and if you need any additional capital items to help you carry out those actions.
You must:
complete the capital items included in your CSHT agreement within 3 years from the start of your agreement
claim for capital items after you have completed them and within 3 months of the end of this 3-year period”
There is also a section (Section 13) outlining what permissions and licenses might be required for projects. Bodies such as the Forestry Commission, Natural England, Historic England or the Environment Agency will often need to be consulted with. So planning for such permissions well ahead of an application is a good idea.
And finally – there’s also advice in Section 8 about land that’s conditionally exempt from inheritance tax!
“Land that’s conditionally exempt from Inheritance Tax (or the object of a maintenance fund) may not be eligible for CSHT actions if they are not compatible with or duplicate an activity within the exemption. Read: ‘Eligible funding on land conditionally exempt from Inheritance Tax’ for more information and to see which actions or capital items are eligible or not.”
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