Guidance

How the Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant round 1 works

Updated 14 March 2024

Applies to England

Only invited applicants can apply for round 1 of the Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant.

Find out about other grants and funds. 

1. What the grant is for

You can apply for a Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant to build new, or upgrade existing, buildings to house calves to deliver health and welfare benefits.

For the purposes of this grant, the term ‘calf’ refers to domestic cattle up to 6 months old.

Grant funded calf housing must provide a good ambient environment and facilitate social contact through pair or group housing. A good ambient environment must ensure good air quality, temperature, and humidity within the building through choice of suitable location, ventilation, and other building features.

A successful project will:

• improve calf health and welfare
• enhance environmental sustainability
• introduce innovation

If your project meets all these priorities, it’s more likely to be accepted.

The grant was open for applications from 7 September 2023 to 30 November 2023. It is now closed to new applications.

The grants are being delivered by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

These grants are a part of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway and help to deliver the agreed health and welfare priorities for the cattle sector.

For further information, read the summary of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.

2. Who can apply

You can apply for a grant if you’re an existing cattle farmer carrying out farming activity, including calf rearing, with 11 or more cattle. Any buildings you build or upgrade with money from the grant must be located in England.

You must either own the land you’re building on or have a tenancy agreement for the land until 5 years after the project is complete. You can apply if your current agreement will end sooner than 5 years after the project, if you expect it to continue.

Any monies from the Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant must not be used to cross-subsidise any related, linked, parent, subsidiary, partnership, joint venture businesses or operations based in Northern Ireland. Funds from this grant must be used solely for the purposes of England business operations only.

3. Who cannot apply

The following groups are not eligible for a grant:

• new or start-up farming businesses (with or without cattle)
• existing farm businesses with 10 cattle or fewer
• public organisations, including Crown bodies and non-departmental public bodies
• local authorities

4. How the application process works

You’ll need to follow a 3-stage application process. Read the how to apply guidance for full information on how to apply.

The grant is competitive, so your application will be scored against the funding priorities.

If your application is eligible and scores highly enough, we’ll offer you a Grant Funding Agreement (GFA).

4.1 Vet consultation

To apply, you need to discuss your project with a vet and include a letter of confirmation with your full application.

One way to do this would be to apply for an Annual Health and Welfare Review, available through Defra’s Animal Health and Welfare Pathway. The Review is a fully funded visit by your choice of vet who will give you bespoke advice on animal health and welfare, as well as testing for key diseases and conditions. You can also make your own arrangements if you wish to.

5. How much money you can apply for

The minimum grant you can apply for is £15,000 (40% of £37,500). The maximum grant is £500,000 per applicant business. The minimum grant amount does not include costs associated with rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems.

Grants can cover up to a maximum rate of 40% of the eligible costs of a project.

If you’re including rooftop solar PV systems as part of your project, we will only fund the purchase and installation of these up to 25% of the eligible costs.

• We will only fund rooftop solar PV systems on the roof of your funded calf housing building.
• There is no minimum funding amount for rooftop solar systems as long as the project meets the minimum grant amount of £15,000.

Installing a solar PV system on your funded building will contribute to the grant funding priority of enhancing environmental sustainability.

You do not need to include a rooftop solar PV system on your funded building.

You need to be able to pay the remaining project costs. You can use loans, overdrafts, and certain other monies, such as money received through the Basic Payment Scheme or agri-environment schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship scheme.

You cannot use other public money, such as grant funding from local authorities, towards the project costs. You also cannot use this grant to carry out capital works which you need to do as part of other agreements.

6. When you can claim payment

You can claim for payment after the work being claimed for is finished and has been paid for. You can make a maximum of 3 claims over the course of the project.

You must not start work, commit to any costs (including paying deposits), enter into any legal contracts, or place an order until your project start date. This date will be in your GFA.

If you incur project costs before that date, you may make your application ineligible, as the project could be considered as already started.

If you buy an item for the project using lease purchase or hire purchase, you need to own it outright before you can claim any grant money towards it. If you do not own it outright, you will not be able to include these costs in your claim.

This means that you need to pay all the instalments and show that the title has passed to you before you claim the grant.

7. Evaluation and learning

The Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant will gather information on projects receiving public investment. To help us improve national data and future funding rounds, we will ask successful applicants to take part in evaluation and learning activities. We may also ask unsuccessful applicants about their experience with the application process, to improve future grant rounds.

This information is one of the public goods that the grant is paying for as part of wider government measures for animal health and welfare. We will not use the information you give us to assess project compliance.

We will explain how you can provide this information in your GFA. This will be part of your agreement obligations, and failure to provide this information may delay the payment of your claim.

We will ask you about:

• calf mortality
• medicine use

You must also keep a record of temperature and humidity data, as we may ask to see this.