Environmental watchdog ‘unsure’ if current government funding will deliver nature targets

Each year, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), England’s environmental watchdog, publishes a report which summarises the government’s progress towards its environmental targets. Like last year, the report identifies a worrying lack of progress, which was mostly attributed to a lack of proper delivery plans. This year, the OEP has concluded that even less progress has been made than the year before.

The annual report takes a comprehensive look at the government’s progress across different targets, including those set in law and those set in the Environment Improvement Plam (EIP). The EIP is currently under review, with an updated version expected to be published in the coming months. The CLA has been engaging with Defra on the review, as well as with other projects which aim to identify blockers to environmental delivery and economic growth, such as the Dan Corry review.

This year, the report has a big focus on nature-friendly farming, which refers to agricultural land being used in a way that protects and enhances the environment. This includes participation in Environmental Land Management (ELM) Schemes, schemes like Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL), compliance with regulations (like the Farming Rules for Water), and voluntary efforts.

Of the 13 targets set in the Environment Act 2021, the OEP concluded that the government is off-track for five of them. The report also says that of the 52 recommendations made in last year’s report, good progress has been made on just five.

The OEP believes there are a few reasons for why progress has not been made, one of which is an over reliance on nature-friendly farming to deliver a huge amount of the targets. For example, there are a range of government policies aimed at improving the quality of agricultural and peat soils, but none aimed at urban or brownfield soils. The report also identifies problems with conflating uptake of schemes with environmental improvement. The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is the ELM scheme designed to have broad appeal to make it accessible to most farm businesses. However, the OEP is concerned that high uptake of this scheme would not necessarily result in huge benefits for the environment. The report instead calls for a scaling up of Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery, firstly, by making sure that the incentive is sufficient for farmers to want to join the scheme, and secondly, a combination spatial targeting and advice to ensure actions are happening where they are most needed.

The CLA has been arguing for some time that the current level of funding in the agriculture budget is insufficient to deliver such a wide range of environment targets, while keeping farmers farming. On ELMs, the report says, “we are unsure whether the current level of funding will be sufficient to deliver the outcomes needed for the government’s targets.”

The report also argues that voluntary initiatives alone will not be enough to meet the targets, and that there is a need both for greater regulation, and greater enforcement to increase compliance with existing regulations.

The CLA continues to monitor the situation.