We attended a meeting last organised by Natural England, to discuss the next steps on the requirement for adequate record keeping relating to fulfil EU requirements. Post-2013 agri-environment agreements have record keeping requirements clearly laid out as part of the schemes, whereas pre 2013 agreements were vaguer. However the UK has fallen foul of European requirements and has already been hit with disallowance fines for this ‘failure’, with more fines to come. The meeting was held to try to come to agreement on the minimum level of record keeping required sufficient to satisfy the EU. As you would expect this meeting had a ‘heated element’ to it, as the participants were trying marry EU requirements with what is practical for farmers. We await Natural England proposals following this meeting.
