Introduction

This guidance explains how to apply for the Countryside Stewardship (CS) Wildlife Offers after you’ve received your application pack by email or post.

You can request an application pack using the Rural Payments service. The pack will be emailed to you and will contain the information we hold for your business in the Rural Payments service. Check your junk folder if you have not received the application pack in your inbox following your request. The pack is emailed only once, so it’s important that all your information is up to date in the Rural Payments service before you request the pack.

If you cannot access the internet to request an application pack, call us on 03000 200 301 and we’ll try to help.

To find out what you need to do, read ‘Countryside Stewardship (CS) Mid Tier (MT) and Wildlife Offers manual’ on GOV.UK.

If you send your completed application by email, you do not need to sign the application form. (However, if you’re sending a paper application form to us by post, you do still need to sign that.) Before you submit an application, you must have both of the following in the Rural Payments service:

  • the correct permission level to submit an application
  • the business email address must be registered against the SBI

We’ll only accept documents such as forms, if they are either printed and sent by post or scanned and attached to an email (maximum size of emails we can accept is 32MB). For security reasons, we cannot accept discs, USB pen drives or other external storage media. For more information read Step 8 – Submit your application.

You may need to keep evidence until we ask for it. For more information read ‘Countryside Stewardship grants’ on GOV.UK. When you receive an offer from RPA, you will need to sign the acceptance declaration and return it.

When to apply

The deadline for the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) to receive your completed application and supporting documents is midnight on 30 July 2021.

We recommend that you submit your application as early as possible and well before the deadline to allow time to resolve any queries. This will help us make decisions and recommendations about your application. Read ‘Key dates’ for more information.

For further advice, please contact us using the details in ‘More information and contacts’ in this guidance. More contact details are in Annex 7 of the Countryside Stewardship (CS) Mid Tier and Wildlife Offers manual.