Countryside Stewardship Scheme | Research

As part of our documentary, we are talking about something called the 'Countryside Stewardship Scheme'. Before going any further with the development of our documentary I decided to do some research on the scheme.

The Scheme

• When talking to John in our first encounter, he mentioned the scheme and told us what there aim is and how they help his farm, while also giving us some negatives on it to create an argument which will help us when writing the script for the documentary.

• On 'GOV.UK' it has a whole section on the countryside stewardship scheme and what it basically is -

The Country Stewardship [CS] provides financial incentives for land managers to look after their environment through activities such as:

• conserving and restoring wildlife habitats
• flood risk management
• woodland creation and management
• reducing widespread water pollution from agriculture
• keeping the character of the countryside
• preserving features important to the history of the rural landscape
• encouraging educational access

The scheme is:

• open to all eligible farmers, woodland owners, foresters and other land managers
• suitable or many types of land use (eg conventional and organic farmland, coastal areas, uplands and woodlands)
• competitive
• scored against local priority targets to maximise environmental benefit

• The CS was put in place in June 2015 and the organisations who were involved were Natural England, Forestry Commission, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and others. The scheme was last updated, recently, on March 14th 2016.