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Tenant Farmers: Diversification

Volume 455: debated on Tuesday 9 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what factors were taken into account in the decision to end the funding for the scheme set up to help tenant farmers to seek the means to diversify. (109643)

The decision to end the adjudication scheme was not taken lightly. The Scheme supports the Code of Good Practice for agri-environment schemes and diversification projects within agricultural tenancies. It is administered by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and was set up in December last year, with the intention that it would continue for a period of four years. However, since its launch in December 2005, there has not been a single application for the Scheme.

Given the current financial constraints within DEFRA, it would not have been a sensible use of public money to allocate funds for a further three years to a scheme in which there has been no interest. Therefore, we decided reluctantly that the Scheme should be closed at the end of 2006.

The closure of the Scheme does not affect the validity of the Code of Good Practice, which stands in its own right and gives useful and informative advice to tenants and landlords contemplating diversification activities. The Code is available from the DEFRA website at:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/working/tenancies/pdf/trig-cogp.pdf.