Shock closure of Sustainable Farming Incentive for 2025
On the evening of 11th March, without warning, Defra closed the Sustainable Farming Incentive to new applications. It is reported this is due to the total available budget having now been allocated to those applications already received during 2024/25.
What this means for you now:
- If you have a live SFI agreement: Nothing changes. You will continue to receive payments as normal under the terms of your agreement.
- If you’ve been offered an SFI agreement but not yet accepted: You need to accept your SFI agreement offer within 10 working days of it being offered, otherwise it will be withdrawn.
- If you had submitted an SFI application before 6pm on 11th March but have not yet received an offer: You will still be offered an agreement, provided your application is eligible.
- If you started an SFI application but did not submit before 6pm on 11th March: You will not be able to submit your application. Some exceptions to this will be made for farmers who had requested ‘assisted digital’ support from the RPA to apply.
- If you are in or were in the SFI Pilot: If you are in the SFI Pilot, you will be able to apply when your pilot agreement ends. If you were in the Pilot and your agreement has ended already but you haven’t submitted an application for the expanded SFI offer yet, you will still be able to apply.
What will happen next?
The budget for a “reformed” SFI will be confirmed in this summer’s Spending Review. The “reformed” SFI scheme would then be re-launched in 2026.
Complete our Farmer Engagement Survey
With the growing pressures the farming community is currently facing we think it is more important than ever to review our delivery approach for 2025 to ensure the support we provide meets your needs.
We ask you to spare 5 minutes in your busy bay to complete our Farmer Engagement Survey. The survey will help us to gather feedback about our work at the Hub, which issues and topics are of most important to you and how you would like our support to be provided.
We appreciate this is a busy period to ask for another five minutes of your time, and have kept the survey as short as possible, but your feedback is really important to us.
If you could complete the survey by the 17th March it would be so much appreciated.
If we can help in the meantime please get in contact with one of the team!
The Hub Team