NVZ reprieve for farmers awaiting de-designation news

NFU lobbying could have potentially saved farmers hundreds of thousands of pounds after it secured a 12-month postponement on the new NVZ slurry storage rules for farms in NVZs where nitrate levels justify de-designation at the next NVZ review.

The NFU expects around 5,000 farmers could benefit from the extension, which means they can wait before building additional slurry storage to comply with the Nitrate Vulnerable Zones Directive, while they find out if their land will be de-designated or not. Substantial savings will be made for those that could see their land removed from the NVZ list where nitrate levels have improved sufficiently.

The move comes after years of work by the NFU and its advisers since Defra first published its proposals for the NVZ action programme back in 2005. This has seen the lobbying of MPs in their constituencies as well as key advisers at a national government level.

NFU President Peter Kendall said: "The NFU lobbied hard for this postponement arguing that it was unreasonable to ask farmers to invest substantial sums of money on additional slurry storage while waiting to hear if their farm was one of those being removed from a NVZ zone. This could potentially save some members tens of thousands of pounds from not having to build – what we have always argued - was unnecessary storage in the first place."