Future Farming Resilience Fund – time for a review?

In its original ‘Health and Harmony’ consultation, DEFRA promised that funds would be available to encourage farmers and land managers to take advice on how to restructure and review their businesses, before the planned subsidy cuts came fully into effect.

One way to achieve this is the Future Farming Resilience Fund. This programme gives a business free access to an experienced independent consultant who’ll meet the farmer; review his historic business accounts; and discuss the impact of the proposed subsidy changes. They will, effectively, produce a full business plan highlighting previous performance; current strengths and weaknesses; options; swot analysis; succession planning; and a projected way forward. All of this is entirely free of charge, with all the consultant’s costs being covered by DEFRA.

DEFRA has confirmed that the final £32 million phase of the Future Farming Resilience Fund support programme will open this September. You can find the regional index of consultants here.

Those who’ve used this service in earlier rounds, speak quite highly of it. A former Larking Gowen partner, from North Norfolk, who put his own small farm through the process, tells us it took about a day of his time, spread over a few weeks, and the consultant probably spent two or three times more than that. The end product was a fairly comprehensive and genuinely useful report, running to about 20 pages on the business; its history; current viability; and future.

Given that the cost of the process and report is wholly funded by DEFRA, and the end product is a helpful and valuable permanent document, the only question must be, “Why wouldn’t you take advantage?”

Need help?

If you need more details regarding the information discussed in this article, or have any other questions, please get in touch with your usual Larking Gowen contact or look for contact details in the Our People section of the our website. Alternatively, call 0330 024 0888 or email enquiry@larking-gowen.co.uk.

Bruce Masson