OAKBANK NEWS AND BLOG

Tens of thousands of agreements are about to end, a new SFI26 round has opened with a fixed pot, and Higher Tier is coming back gradually. Here is the picture as it stands in July 2026. England is heading towards the biggest churn of agri-environment agreements for some time. The individual announcements paint one picture and we have brought together some headline figures to highlight another. Fig 1. Live agri-environment agreements in England by scheme, 2023 to 2030; figures

Defra's offer of £225m capital grants for farm investment in England including an interactive summary.

The government's 25-year roadmap puts soil, habitat and farm wildlife at the heart of food production. We'd urge every land manager to read carefully how it intends to pay for all this, because the smart money may be on acting now. Yesterday (24th June), Defra published Farming Roadmap 2050: Growing England's Future, alongside its response to Baroness Batters' Farming Profitability Review. For those of us who have spent our careers arguing that productive farming and a recove

On 15 April 2026, Defra published responses to two parallel Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) consultations and opened a third on an additional targeted exemption for brownfield residential development. Together, the responses confirm when major infrastructure projects will start drawing on the off-site biodiversity unit market, exempt around half of the smallest residential sites, and broaden the geography in which a land parcel can supply units to a development. What has been con

The UK Government has launched a joint consultation and call for evidence on modernising fertilisers legislation , led by Defra and supported by the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. The consultation is now open and will run until 13th May 2026. What is the UK fertiliser consultation proposing? The proposals aim to repeal existing fertiliser product legislation (which covers the rules surrounding the supply of fertiliser) and replace it

The UK Government has published England’s Land Use Framework, aiming to balance multiple, competing demands on our finite land resources, support smarter land use decisions and accelerate environmental improvements by providing a "single, shared vision" and better data for planners, farmers and communities. It comes after years of calls for such a joined-up approach, notably from Henry Dimbleby, who in his 2021 National Food Strategy recommended a rural land use framework (th

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Emma Reynolds, announced in her speech at the NFU Conference the welcome return of the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) 2026, with a dedicated budget of £50m. FETF 2026 will re-open for applications on 17th March and will be available to all eligible farmers, growers, forestry owners and contractors in England (those registered with the RPA with an Single Business Identifier (SBI) number.) 💡 This annou

This week, a new global report published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) examines the interdependencies between business and biodiversity. In a world that has to grapple with new ways of achieving economic growth, without further degrading nature, the assessment is that despite data quality and methodologies improving, global business remains too tangled in complexity to deliver meaningful nature-positive action

As I made my way to Oxford for my second year at the Conference, the weather warnings made a part of me wonder if we’ll all end up snowed‑in together in the Examination Rooms, Ministers included. It would certainly allow plenty of time for the kind of in‑depth conversations farming needs right now! Joking aside, the Oxford Farming Conference always feels like the perfect place to take stock of where policy in practice is heading, particularly in England. December brought some

Today, the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published the new Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) for England , - a "detailed roadmap" to deliver legally binding environmental targets under the Environment Act 2021. Alongside the EIP, the government has announced £500 million in public funding for Landscape Recovery , designed to leverage private finance such as Biodiversity Net Gain units and carbon credits, and £85 million to improve and r

Defra confirms a one-year Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier extension for over 5,000 English farmers, offering payment continuity and environmental delivery support.

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) are spatial plans, stemming from the Environment Act 2021, to drive habitat restoration, nature-based solutions and environmental improvements across England. With nature in decline (e.g. species studied across the UK have declined on average by 19% since 1970) and in the context of national targets for reversing this decline, LNRSs should provide locally led roadmaps showing where best outcomes (i.e. most needed and most likely to su

There is no hiding the fact that our wildlife is in need of some help. In the UK, 41% of species have experienced declines since 1970. Farmland birds have been some of the hardest hit, with an overall 56% decline in populations in the same 50 years. Corn bunting, grey partridge, turtle dove and tree sparrow have all declined by over 90%, with the turtle dove fast approaching extinction in the UK. As farmers, gamekeepers, and land managers, many are well placed to contribute t