Coronavirus (COVID-19): information for farmers, landowners and rural businesses

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The latest information for farmers, landowners and rural businesses during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Read this page for regular updates.

Updates on rural payments, grants and services

Countryside Stewardship

Countryside Stewardship capital claims

If you have problems collecting all the evidence for your capital claim due to coronavirus (COVID-19) illness or restrictions, please do all you can to submit your claim, making it clear that your evidence is missing due to coronavirus (COVID-19). Please continue to collect the evidence as soon as you are able to do so, and keep hold of it as we’ll ask for it at a later date.

Countryside Stewardship: extension to capital agreements

We are offering an extension of one year to all customers with capital agreements that started after 1 April 2018 or in 2019 for:

• Hedgerows and Boundaries grant
• Woodland creation, Woodland tree health, Woodland management plan,
• PA1, PA2 and PA3
• Water capital grants
• Historic Buildings Restoration grants

For agreements that started in 2020, the claim period remains the same, but this will be reviewed.

Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) - Growth Programme

British Cattle Movement Service: requesting cattle passport amendments

Following the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak we temporarily asked you to request cattle passport amendments by email.

Who we will contact

We want to reach as many customers as possible during these challenging times. Therefore, we are sending reminders to more of our BPS and CS contacts we hold in the Rural Payment service who have ‘submit’ or ‘full’ permissions.

• Customers or their agents must hold ‘submit’ and ‘full’ business permissions
• An agent with ‘full’ business or ‘submit’ permissions supersedes a customer with ‘full’ or ‘submit’ business permissions
• If multiple agents have ‘submit’ or ‘full’ permissions, the agent with ‘full’ business permission supersedes those with ‘submit’
• If multiple agents have ‘full business’ permissions, they all receive any communications
• If there is no agent with ‘full’ business permission, but there are multiple agents with ‘submit’ permissions, they will all receive any communications
• All agents must have an email address registered in the Rural Payments service
• If no agents fit the above criteria, the same criteria will be used against the remaining people with permissions.

You need to be certain that any correspondence or contact you receive from us is genuine as there are coronavirus (COVID-19) related scams from people claiming to be from other government departments.

Postal addresses

Where there is no email option available, use the following addresses for anything urgent

Countryside Stewardship customers

Basic Payment Scheme customers and all RLE1 forms

BCMS customers