10 Monitoring progress, evidence and record keeping
You must read and meet the requirements detailed in this section as these are mandatory for all Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund Agreement holders.
We are required to make sure that Countryside Stewardship and the Facilitation Fund are properly controlled in order to protect public money. To support this, we will undertake administrative checks and site visits to monitor your (Facilitator’s) compliance with the rules governing your agreements.
We can undertake three main checks:
- administrative record checks
- agreement monitoring checks
- site visits.
You must allow us (or our authorised representatives or auditors) to access your land or premises to carry out site visits. Other UK public authorities may also visit you.
You must help and co-operate with any person carrying out a site visit. Any refusal to do so or obstruction will be treated as a breach of your terms and conditions, and you may face recovery of funds, suspension, or termination of your agreement.
Administrative record checks
We’ll check all stages of the application and claim processes, including your application form, claim forms and where appropriate, the nature and quality of any supporting evidence, such as receipts and assessment forms. This is to make sure that you meet eligibility requirements at the application stage, and that your forms and records match up throughout the agreement period.
If you do not provide records when asked, or there are discrepancies, we will treat this as a breach of your agreement. It is your responsibility to keep such records if you want to rely on this to support your claim.
Agreement monitoring checks
As part of the administrative checks on claims, we select a percentage of claims to carry out follow-up checks of Facilitator records. Therefore, we may ask you to send us copies of records for us to check.
Site visits
Each year, we will carry out site visits on a number of agreements to make sure environmental aims are being delivered and scheme requirements have been met.
You must follow the requirements set out in your agreement and keep any records that are necessary to support your claim.
If we find any discrepancies during the site visit, we may have to apply reductions to your grant funds.
You must obtain and keep evidence to show that you’ve carried out all the requirements of your agreement to support your claim or to support a site visit. You must also keep evidence that you are eligible for the scheme.
Your evidence must show that:
- you are eligible for the scheme
- the activities funded under your agreement are appropriate
- the funded activity is taking or has taken place.
We need you to do this so that we can show that public money is being spent effectively and is delivering the intended results.
You must keep any required evidence and supporting documents and have them available on request.
You must keep evidence to show that you, the business, the land, and all consumable items are eligible. You may have to show this if you are chosen for a site visit.
Some of your evidence including references, maps and group member forms must be submitted with your application. Other supporting evidence such as your group agreement should be kept by you as we may ask to see it as part of our checks. You should keep copies of all supporting documents for the duration of your agreement and for seven years following the end date of your agreement. For more information, read the ‘Terms and Conditions’ at Section 15.
Read Step 4 ‘Supporting documents’ in Section 4 ‘How to Apply’ of this manual for the supporting evidence you need to have in order to support your application.
You may also need to supply evidence to show that you have carried out required actions such as:
- to support a claim. Where relevant, information will be sent with the claim form covering letter. For more information, read Section 10.5 ‘Evidence in support of a claim’.
- during or after an administrative check, an inspection, or other checks.
The ‘Terms and Conditions’ at Section 15 state that you must keep all invoices, receipts, accounts, and any other relevant documents relating to the expenditure of grant funds for at least seven years from the end of your agreement. If we find that the eligibility criteria are no longer being met, your agreement may end, and funds may be recovered.
Each claim for payment will require evidence of the progress made against each delivery milestone.
All applicants in receipt of funds should provide invoices, timesheets, and payslips, accompanied by completed BACs runs (if applicable) and bank statements. Bank statements must show that payment of expenses linked to those invoices occurred on a date prior to the date of your claim. You must have this evidence in support of each and every item you claim grant funds for.
If we find any evidence missing from your claim, we will contact you. You will be given 10 working days to submit this information to us. If it is not received, we will remove the associated funds from your claim.
Members will need to complete an evaluation form after each session held with a Facilitator to give feedback on the value of the session. We may request copies of these evaluation sheets.
10.5.1 Evidence of Spend
You must give evidence of all spending you’re planning to claim for. Some examples of evidence include:
- invoices - where copies of, or electronic invoices are provided in support of your claim, the original invoice must be kept for evidence purposes. We may request to see a sample of your invoices to compare against copies you’ve provided during site visits. Invoices must also be provided as evidence of overhead expenditure, such as bills for heating, lighting, room hire, refreshments, stamps, consumables etc.
- breakdown of travel & subsistence
- receipts
- signed Facilitation Fund timesheets (you must use the template available on GOV.UK) evidencing:
- duration
- dates
- issues covered
- time spent on preparation
- details of costs
- staff costs, with separate calculations for each staff member where appropriate
- payslips (where Facilitator and/or staff are employed by a company)
- receipts from any sub-contractors, including evidence they were selected in a fair and open way and were the best value for money.
10.5.2 Bank Statements as evidence of payment
Proof of payments should be from bank statements or certified copies of bank statements. This means evidence that is clearly and directly generated from your bank’s own system.
Acceptable evidence includes screen shots from an online account with necessary payment details and showing the bank logos.
Key elements that should appear on the bank statement, whether online or hard copy are:
- bank’s name and logo
- account holder name
- sort code
- transaction date
- transaction type (including payee ref/cheque no)
- transaction amount
- date bank evidence generated.
We’ll also accept a printed report from a banking system that despite not clearly showing it has been generated by a banking system, can be verified by your bank.
10.5.3 Pay Slips
Pay slips and BACS evidence must be provided alongside bank statements.
Pay slips must contain sufficient detail to link the payment to your other payment evidence, although sensitive personal information should always be redacted (covered up).
We will accept P60s as evidence for salary payments. If the person remains employed for a project under the same terms in a subsequent year, you can use a P60 from a previous year if verified at the end of the year. Proof of payment for national insurance contributions, pension contributions and income tax must also be supplied.
If payslips are generated from an organisation in a general electronic format i.e. without a logo or other branded and identifiable features, they can still be accepted as supporting evidence. However, they must be formally verified by us as an official payslip during site visits.
It is important that the evidence you supply is from a system that cannot be manipulated or falsified. Excel spreadsheets and screenshots of payroll information for example, are considered open to manipulation and will therefore not be accepted.
As Facilitator, you must provide an annual report which draws on the quarterly reports. This report should identify what is being done differently and the effect this is having on the ground. Natural England use this information in case studies for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
The ‘Terms and Conditions’ at Section 15 require you to comply with all instructions, the scheme manual and any guidance relating to acknowledging and publicising the support provided. This includes using any materials or templates which are provided for this purpose.