Guidance

Educational access visits on your land: Environmental Stewardship

How to host educational access visits safely and within the terms of your Higher Level Stewardship agreement.

• From: Rural Payments Agency, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Natural England
• Published: 11 September 2014
• Last updated: 22 August 2023 — See all updates

Applies to England

You need to be in a Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement with the educational access option to host a visit. Group visits are only available to those agreements that started on or before 1 November 2010. For all HLS agreements (from any start date) there is also an option to host care farming visits in order to receive payment.

Groups can be school parties studying the National Curriculum. You cannot charge the group to visit your land.

You and the group leader will need to fill out the Farm Visit Declaration Form for every visit. Send a copy of this form with your capital works claim form to be able to claim payment. See the how to get paid web page for more information.

Understand the health and safety requirements to run your visit

The Visit My Farm website has the information you need to run a safe educational site visit.

Funding for access related infrastructure improvements (capital works) has now closed, but you can still claim under existing agreements. See the how to get paid web page for more information.

Published 11 September 2014
Last updated 22 August 2023 + show all updates

1. 22 August 2023

   Redirected the 'Farm Visit Declaration Form' link and fixed broken links to an external website.

2. 11 September 2014

   First published.