One-year extensions for Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier agreements confirmed, but SFI certainty still needed

Defra has announced that eligible Countryside Stewardship (CS) Mid-Tier agreements due to end on 31 December 2025 will be offered a one-year extension, following strong lobbying by the CLA and others. This move is intended to provide short-term continuity of environmental delivery for farmers and land managers while the next iteration of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is finalised.

This overview provides further detail on what the extension means for members with CS Mid-Tier agreements expiring at the end of 2025, and what they can expect over the coming weeks.

If your CS Mid-Tier agreement expires this year, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will assess your eligibility and contact you directly by email or post over the next few weeks with an offer to extend your agreement to 31 December 2026.

To accept the extension, you must respond by the deadline stated in the RPA’s letter or email.

The news is a welcome step that will provide short-term certainty for over 5,000 farmers and land managers. However, it does not address the longer-term uncertainty facing farmers.

The extension allows agreement holders to:

• Maintain the environmental outcomes delivered over the past five years
• Ensure continued payments under existing agreements
• Avoid a funding gap while the future of agri-environment schemes is clarified

To remain eligible during the extension period, agreement holders must:

• Continue to meet CS Mid-Tier eligibility criteria
• Comply with all existing rules, terms and conditions
• Notify the RPA of any changes in circumstances

Other important considerations include:

If your agreement includes SSSI land, you must receive consent from Natural England before undertaking any work during the extension period.

You must retain management control of the land throughout the extension.

Tenants may need to obtain their landlord’s consent if there are changes to management control arrangements during the extension period.

If you will not have management control of the agreement land during the extension period, you need to submit a Land Ownership and Control form by 27 February 2026.

You cannot add, remove, or replace options in your agreement.

Short-duration options (less than five years) and incomplete capital items will not be extended or carried forward.

• Look out for a letter or email from the RPA within the next few weeks
• If you wish to accept the extension, respond by the deadline provided
• If applicable, contact Natural England for SSSI consent
• Submit your annual claim in the normal way

If you do not wish to extend your agreement, or cannot meet the conditions, you should inform the RPA of this.

We continue to call for urgent clarity on the future of SFI 2026 to provide certainty and stability for the sector and ensure farmers can continue their efforts to restore nature and farm sustainably.

The CLA team was engaged with scheme redesign principles earlier this year. During this work, we highlighted the need for universal access to the scheme, continued flexibility of actions available to suit different businesses, and the risk of detrimental impacts of a holding level limit on payments.

“This decision is overdue, but …it is now urgent that Labour sets out the SFI scheme to the end of this parliament,” says CLA President Victoria Vyvyan in response to the CS Mid-Tier extension.

Read more about the news here.

You can read more from Defra about the CS Mid-Tier extension here. If you have questions about extending your CS Mid-Tier agreement, please contact the CLA for further guidance.