Dr. Andy Bleasdale:

Bespoke farm plans are not for everybody. Some prefer more broad scale national schemes. Our scheme is quite small in scale and is bespoke and tailored not just to the needs of the NPWS or biodiversity, but also the needs of the farmer. In brokering a discussion, in some cases the farmer becomes highly enthused by the plan and commits to it not just for one cycle but for multiple cycles. We have farmers who are going into their third generation of plans.

Others are not as enamoured by the process and find it a bit slow, tedious and cumbersome. We are trying to streamline our processes and make them more intuitive. The failing that all schemes make is ultimately that they become administrative. We search terms, conditions and rules and penalties and sanctions are applied. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the motivation of the scheme in the first place and what it seeks to do and change.

In simple terms, it seeks to work with farmers who want to farm for nature and to reward them accordingly. If we can work that detail out, everything else is flotsam and jetsam in the process. We should not make the process so cumbersome that farmers lose interest in it or it becomes too bureaucratic for them to get their payments. We are trying to find the sweet spot and are not quite there yet. We do not seek to replicate national schemes; rather, we seek to inform how national schemes might be designed so that the learnings of our interactions with farmers at small scale can inform the roll-out of national schemes like ACRES and co-operation projects. I hope that answers the question.