Julia Aglionby, our Chair, attended a Defra stakeholder meeting last week where progress on CAP reform and next steps were discussed. Julia met both Owen Paterson and David Heath and raised two issues concerning commons:
- the importance of agricultural support for upland commons to maintain and enhance the delivery of public goods
- the need for the implementation of Part 1 of the Commons Act 2006 to ensure Simple, Affordable and Effective delivery of BPS on common land.
The Foundation for Common Land wholeheartedly supports a substantial increase in the proposed BPS for the moorland region. We also require that active pastoral commoning is an objective of the new environmental land management schemes currently under development. Both these actions will contribute to more resilient hill farm businesses many of whom are commoners and their ability to delivery public goods into the future.
On the second matter, a key way to reduce administrative costs and get the money to farmers on common land is to implement Part 1 of the Act so that commons maps can be corrected with the Commons Registration Authorities and ownership information updated. This is a simple, affordable and effective solution to the administration of payments to common land.
Julia has since written a letter to the Secretary of State to reiterate her concerns. To download the letter see below.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 paterson-18-09-13.pdf | 1.72 MB |
