§ Malcolm BruceTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to her answer of 18 April 2002,Official Report, column 1071, on the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, on what basis decisions are made to visit farms after the first year of the scheme; and what monitoring systems are in place to check whether a visit in the second year is necessary. [55338]
§ Mr. MorleyThe compliance monitoring inspections of Countryside Stewardship Scheme agreements carried out by the Rural Payments Agency are selected using risk based criteria and are not specifically related to the year of the agreement. Inspections may therefore take place in any of the ten years of an agreement: the need for any follow-up inspections will be assessed in the light of the initial inspection.
Under the risk based strategy for selecting care and maintenance visits, technical staff from DEFRA's Rural Development Service aim to visit all agreements in their first year. Visits in subsequent years may additionally be carried out following a compliance monitoring inspection, a request for a major amendment to an agreement or at the request of an agreement holder.
§ Malcolm BruceTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many farmers in the United Kingdom have participated in the Countryside Stewardship scheme in each year since it started. [55296]
§ Mr. MorleyThe number of applicants who have joined the Countryside Stewardship scheme in each year since the scheme started in 1991 are as follows:
Number of new agreements 1991–951 5,027 1996 1,117 1997 1,195 1998 1,275 1999 1,168 2000 2,205 20012 2,360 Total number of agreements3 14,347 1 Annual figures for the period 1991—95, when the scheme was operated by the Countryside Commission are not available. 2 Estimate. 3 Farmers may hold more than one agreement.