NFU Vice President Rachel Hallos said: “It has very quickly become clear that there are major issues with the newly announced Farming Recovery Fund, which aimed to help farmers devastated by Storm Henk in January.

“We are hearing from numerous members who have suffered catastrophic impacts who have been told they are not eligible for the Fund because some of their affected areas are more than 150 meters from ‘main’ rivers. These include members with 90% of their land saturated or underwater, and huge damage to buildings and equipment.

“We are taking this up with Defra urgently. I cannot believe this is what Ministers intended when they launched the Fund, which was a welcome and well-intentioned development which seems to have been fundamentally let down in the detail. While the impact of the weather goes far beyond Storm Henk, this could have been a good start but, as it stands, it simply doesn’t work.”