Farm payment scheme SFI closed six hours after opening on 22 September. Vikki Slade MP wants immediate funding for Dorset farmers who were locked out.
Mid Dorset and North Poole MP Vikki Slade is calling for emergency funding for farmers who missed out on the Sustainable Farming Incentive, after the Government scheme opened and closed again in a single afternoon last month.
The second application window for SFI 2026 opened at 10am on 22 September and shut at 4pm, Defra figures show. By then about 12,200 applications had gone in, worth £263.9 million against a budget of £253 million, and another 2,859 had been started but not submitted, according to Defra’s response to an information request published on 20 October.
Ms Slade says farmers at a recent meeting with her named the closure as their biggest worry, and that it has left many in Dorset without a universal baseline payment for the first time since 1945.
“A chaotic six-hour frenzy”
“It is an absolute disgrace that farmers in Dorset working tirelessly to keep food on our tables and protect our countryside are being failed time and again,” the Liberal Democrat MP said.
“I recently met with local farmers in the National Farming Union to discuss the issues that are affecting them the most at the moment and the SFI shambles was at the top of their list.
“The Government mishandled the Sustainable Farming Incentive and turned it into a chaotic six-hour frenzy. That is no way to run national agricultural policy.”
She wants the Government to pay those who were shut out straight away.
“The Government needs to treat this as the emergency that it is and take urgent action to support British farmers, providing immediate funding to farmers who were locked out by the SFI process,” she said.
“Food security is national security, we cannot let this important industry continue to struggle for survival if we want to be a strong and self-sufficient nation.”
What the scheme is
The Sustainable Farming Incentive pays farmers for actions that support food production and the environment. It was brought in after Brexit to replace the EU’s Basic Payment Scheme, and Ms Slade’s office says it has had problems since it was launched under the previous Conservative government. The current version’s terms are on GOV.UK.
Six hours, hour by hour
Defra’s own figures show how fast the money went. Applications worth £37.4 million had arrived by 11am, £142.9 million by 1pm and £231.1 million by 3pm. When the window closed at 4pm the total stood at £263.9 million. Defra says it let the total run past the £253 million budget to allow for agreements shrinking over their three-year life.
The same response shows Defra saw it coming. Its forecasts from April and May said that under high demand the scheme “would need to close shortly after Window 2 launched in September, including scenarios that led to closure on the day of opening”. Defra withheld the advice it gave ministers on the same question.
The application count was nearly twice the 6,700 of the first window, according to Defra’s uptake statistics. About 72% of the second-window applications came from farm businesses with an existing environmental agreement due to expire by February 2027. Neither release breaks the figures down by county, so there is no published count yet of how many Dorset farms were turned away.
What it means for you
- Nothing has changed yet. The call for emergency funding comes from an opposition MP; the Government has not responded to it in the material sent to us.
- If you farm in Mid Dorset and North Poole and were locked out, or did not get your application in, your MP’s contact details are on the UK Parliament website.
- Other grants for farmers are listed on GOV.UK’s funding for farmers page.
Ms Slade’s last call to the Government was for a hospitality VAT cut in the Budget.
Have your say