Countryside Stewardship: how the end of cross compliance affects your agreement
Changes to terms and conditions for existing agreement holders.
Applies to England
If you are a farmer or land manager and claimed rural payments between 2005 and 2023, you had to follow a set of rules called cross compliance. These rules ended at midnight on 31 December 2023.
Regulations will continue to protect the environment, and animal health and welfare. Compliance will be monitored by the existing statutory bodies and regulated in a fair, proportionate, and consistent way. This means, wherever possible, we will work with you to get it right and give you opportunities to self-correct before we need to take any formal action.
2024 Agreement holders
The applicant and agreement holder’s guides published in 2023 for agreements starting 1 January 2024 will have included references to cross compliance. We have updated the terms and conditions of your agreement to reflect the end of cross compliance. These updated terms and conditions will apply to your agreement when it starts on 1 January 2024. The Applicant and Agreement holder’s guides will also be updated to reflect this change.
2016 to 2023 Agreement holders
We have updated the terms and conditions of your agreements to reflect the end of cross compliance. Mid Tier and Higher Tier agreement holder’s guides will not be updated, however all references to cross compliance in these guides are no longer relevant. We have amended the guides to remove cross compliance for capital only agreements, starting in 2023.
You must continue to comply with domestic legislation. You can find more information about this in the following:
Rules for all Agreement holders
The removal of cross compliance will only have limited impact on the way you manage your agreement. You must continue to comply with legal requirements around certain farming activities to protect people, livestock and the environment. These rules are set out in the Rules for farmers and land managers.
Hedgerows
Hedgerow management rules apply in England to protect and manage hedgerows on agricultural land. These take account of the Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024 which came into force on 23 May 2024.
The rules apply to hedgerows growing on, or next to, land used for agriculture and may impact how you carry out certain agricultural activities, including those in your CS agreement.
The hedgerow management rules include:
- a 2-metre ‘buffer strip’, measured from the centre of a hedgerow, where a green cover must be established and maintained
- no cultivation or application of pesticides or fertilisers within the 2-metre buffer strip
- a hedgerow cutting and trimming ban from 1 March to 31 August (inclusive)
You must comply with the hedgerow management rules on cutting and trimming, and buffer strips when delivering any of your CS options or capital items. Where an option requires cultivation or the application of pesticides or fertiliser, this will usually mean the option must be established at least 2 metres from the centre of the hedgerow.
It may affect your agreement if you do not comply with this scheme requirement.
SW1 and SW2 – 4 to 6 metre buffer strips on cultivated land and intensive grassland
If your agreement contains SW1 or SW2 grass buffer strip options that are delivered next to a hedgerow, you are required to start measuring the options at least 2 metres from the centre of the hedgerow (excluding the land within 2 metres of the centre of the hedgerow). This is because we are not able to pay you for the 2-metre buffer strip which applies under the management of hedgerow regulations.
If your agreement started before 1 January 2024, this is already a requirement of your CS buffer strip options.
If your agreements started on 1 January 2024, the requirement to start measuring your SW1 or SW2 buffer strips at least 2 metres from the centre of the hedgerow comes into effect from 1 January 2025.
If your SW1 or SW2 buffer strip option area overlaps the land within 2 metres of the centre of the hedgerow, this may affect your agreement.
You can read more information about the rules, and exemptions, on hedgerow management rules: cutting and trimming and hedgerow management rules: buffer strips.
Stone walls, earth and stone banks
Stone walls, earth and stone banks that have been created or maintained through a Stewardship option, must remain in place and be subject to the terms of your existing agreement.
In addition, you will need to consider any other legal obligations, for example if there are planning protections in conservation areas for certain boundary features. Your local planning authority will provide more information and you should contact them before you take any action.
Water buffer strips
You must consider the legal requirements around the protection of watercourses and waterbodies.
The Farming rules for water prevent the use of manure and fertiliser close to a water course. You must take all reasonable precautions to prevent pollution from land management and cultivation practices, such as spraying pesticides.
There is no longer a requirement to maintain a green cover on land either
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within 2 metres of the centre of a watercourse
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from 1 metre on the landward side of the bank
However, use of grass buffer strips continues to be one of the many important actions you can take to prevent water pollution and meet the Farming Rules for Water.
Soils
The Farming rules for water continue to require reasonable precautions to be taken which will prevent soil erosion such as establishing cover crops and grass buffer strips.
Updates to this page
Last updated 29 October 2024 + show all updates
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Removal of cross compliance information as no longer relevant. Addition of the impact of hedgerow regulations on the scheme.
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First published.