GWCT’s Allerton Project locked out as SFI budget vanishes in hours

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s (GWCT) Allerton Project was unable to submit its prepared Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) application when the SFI26 window opened on 22 September, and the £253m budget was exhausted before the fault could be fixed. The 320ha Leicestershire research farm, whose work underpins much of the evidence for game management’s conservation benefits, now faces at least a year without an agri-environment scheme.

Why was the Allerton Project locked out?

Staff had spent weeks preparing a detailed SFI26 application, Farmers Weekly reported, only to find on the morning of 22 September that the Rural Payments Agency portal would not accept it. “We were online at 10am to submit the scheme only to find that ‘computer said no’,” said Joe Stanley, the project’s head of sustainable farming.

The block traced back to the farm’s small existing SFI23 agreement: the whole-field nature of its no-insecticide option prevented other actions being added to the same fields. “It really did scupper the job,” Mr Stanley said. Staff spent 352 minutes trying to resolve the problem, including hours on hold to the agency’s helpline, but the £253m fund closed less than six hours after opening, heavily oversubscribed.

Thirty years of showing farmers the way, left without a scheme

The Allerton Project’s Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier agreement expires in December, and the SFI26 agreement it had designed, worth about £85,000 a year, was meant to carry the environmental measures already embedded in the farm’s system. “We have spent 30 years encouraging farmers, some of whom have been quite sceptical, to engage in agri-environment schemes,” Mr Stanley said. “We are now left high and dry without a scheme until at least 2027.”

“For us to be locked out of the scheme that we helped to create is even more remarkable,” he added. The application had been designed field by field, balancing food production against soil and wildlife measures, down to an erosion-reducing strip alongside a pollen and nectar mix beneath a hedge.

Alastair Leake, the project’s director, said the process had failed to accommodate that planning. “It is ridiculous that the SFI took 10 years to design but gave farmers a six-hour window to apply,” he said. “You can only infer a profound lack of care for wildlife and the countryside on the part of this administration.”

What happens next

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said it will consider appeals from unsuccessful applicants and from those promised technical support, though its website indicates the entire SFI26 Window 2 budget is already allocated. The Rivers Trust published an open letter to Defra ministers on 25 September calling for changes to the process, and the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has demanded clear guidance for farmers left out. Unless an appeal succeeds, the sector’s flagship demonstration farm enters 2027 with no scheme behind its environmental work.