The Tenant Farmers Association in Wales (TFA Cymru) has warmly welcomed the announcement made by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, Huw Irranca-Davies MS, on progress with the development of the new Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) proposed to be introduced in January 2026.

TFA Cymru Chair, Dennis Matheson MBE, said “If implemented as initially proposed within the Welsh Government’s Consultation, the SFS would have been a disaster for the tenanted sector of agriculture. Yes, the previous Cabinet Secretary had accepted that tenant farmers should not be required to comply with the proposed 10% tree cover rule, but there was still a large number of the Universal Actions with which tenant farmers would not have been able to comply. The current Cabinet Secretary has listened to those concerns and has proposed a new scheme outline which, very happily, overcomes our objections.”

Throughout the engagement with Welsh Government on the development of the SFS, TFA Cymru has had one clear goal, to ensure that it works for the tenanted sector of agriculture. It was important that tenant farmers were not locked out of participating, particularly as Basic Payment Scheme payments, under the legacy common agricultural policy schemes, were being stripped away. Equally, it was vital to ensure that tenant farmers did not lose access to the land that they were farming to allow their landlords to enter the scheme directly.

Alongside the criticism of the proposed scheme from TFA Cymru, the SFS had come under fire from several other quarters, leading to the Cabinet Secretary to undertake a much welcome root and branch review of the scheme through a Ministerial Roundtable, an officials’ group and a carbon sequestration panel. TFA Cymru has played an active part in that process.

“We are delighted that the new scheme outline has scaled back the number of universal actions from 17 to 12 and that they have been amended to be more pragmatic in their approach than in the actions proposed in the last consultation. TFA Cymru is also delighted that Welsh Government has confirmed that where the requirement of a Universal Action is incompatible with the contractual or statutory obligations of a tenant farmer, the SFS will not require an action which the tenant cannot legally undertake. That is a huge step forward for the let sector of agriculture,” said Mr Matheson.

“In addition, TFA Cymru has welcomed the statement made by the Cabinet Secretary that where the consent of a landlord might be needed by a tenant before participating in the SFS, it would be unreasonable for a landlord to deny access. That will be helpful in any action a tenant might need to take in formally objecting to their landlord’s unreasonable refusal to consent to their participation,” said Mr Matheson.

“Of course, there is a long way to go and we await the full impact assessment, economic case, the schedule of payments and the full scheme rules. However, given the commitment displayed by the Cabinet Secretary to date, we remain confident that we will eventually land in a good place in time for the implementation of the scheme in January 2026. This is a long way further forward than we thought we would be at the end of the consultation in the spring,” said Mr Matheson.

-Ends-

22 November 2024

MR24/16

Notes for Editors:

For media enquiries, contact Julia Meadows, TFA Communications and Events Coordinator, on 0118 930 6130 or 07887 777157.