At the end of July, guidance was published for farmers who were facing difficulties meeting requirements for rural grant and payment schemes due to the hot and dry weather.

Since then, Defra has approved temporary prescription adjustments (TPA) to some Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ESoptions) due to the extreme challenges that farmers have faced this year. The ‘Options with temporary adjustments’ document lists those options that have a temporary adjustment.

Agreement holders can choose to either implement their existing options without adjustment, or apply to Natural England to implement the options with adjustments.

These adjustments apply from 14 September to 31 December 2018, unless otherwise stated in the detail of the individual options.

From 1 January 2019 all options will revert to their original prescriptions.

Due to this year’s drought conditions, these adjustments have been introduced to help ease shortages of bedding, fodder, grazing, or forage crops – this is mainly for your own use and to share with the wider community, but should not be for profit.

If you choose to follow any of these adjustments, you must apply to Natural England as set out below

You must still meet with regulatory and cross compliance requirements, and consider soil conditions (poaching, compaction, run-off), particularly on land which is grazed or used by machinery.

How to apply

Fill in the form ‘Temporary Prescription Adjustments’ and email it to ruralpayments@defra.gsi.gov.uk and use Temporary Prescription Adjustments in the subject line.

Make sure you use a separate form for each agreement.

You will receive an automatic reply to your email confirming that we have received your form.

Once you have submitted your form and received the automatic acknowledgement, you can make the prescribed adjustments chosen to your options straightaway.

We will not normally contact you again about your form but we will keep the details on your agreement records.

You will need to keep the following records and produce them if you are asked to do so.

• Field operations at the parcel level, including associated invoices
• Stock records to show grazing activity on parcels.