About
What is a facilitation fund?
The Countryside Stewardship (CS) Facilitation Fund is administered by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The Facilitation Fund was established in 2015 and has so far set up 224 groups with 5982 members of farmers and land managers, developing their knowledge and skills to improve nature restoration in their local areas.
Monitoring and evaluation studies have found that by coordinating action and working together, groups have achieved greater environmental benefits than would be the case from individual actions alone.
What can a facilitation fund achieve?
It supports Defra’s objectives
Facilitation Funds support Defra’s objective of ‘a cleaner, healthier environment, benefitting people and the economy’. They also support Defra’s Environmental Improvement Plan ‘for our country to be the healthiest, most beautiful place in the world to live, work and bring up a family’.
They will support Defra’s Environmental Improvement Plan by focusing on:
- net zero
- air quality
- increasing biodiversity and supporting priority species
- water management
While the TVFF supports all four of these factors, it places particular emphasis on increasing biodiversity and supporting priority species and water management.
It creates successful collaboration
By providing land managers with a local support network, the fund encourages long-term engagement with positive environmental results.
It facilitates learning together with expertise and best practice amongst land managers and stakeholders, achieved through the sharing of information and skills, and through the delivery of external training.
By planning and delivering shared actions or projects together, we can achieve higher quality environmental results across multiple holdings.
Defra’s Objectives
