Environmental Stewardship is a new agri-environment scheme which provides funding to farmers and other land managers in England who deliver effective environmental management on their land.

Its primary objectives are to:

• Conserve wildlife (biodiversity)
  
• Maintain and enhance landscape quality and character
  
• Protect the historic environment and natural resources
  
• Promote public access and understanding of the countryside
  

Within the primary objectives it also has the secondary objectives of:

• Genetic conservation
  
• Flood management
  

Environmental stewardship has three elements:

Entry Level Stewardship (ELS)
is a ‘whole farm’ scheme open to all farmers and land managers who farm their land conventionally. Acceptance will be guaranteed provided you can meet the scheme requirements. If you have a mix of conventionally and organically farmed land, or if your land is farmed organically, you should apply for OELS.

Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS)
is a ‘whole farm’ scheme similar to ELS, open to farmers who manage all or part of their land organically and who are not receiving aid under the Organic Aid Scheme (OAS) or the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS)

Higher Level Stewardship (HLS)
which will be combined with ELS or OELS options, aims to deliver significant environmental benefits in high priority situations and areas.

The aim is for 70% of all holdings in the UK to be entered into the Entry Level scheme. Currently 20% of holdings are entered into Countryside Stewardship Schemes or ESA Management Agreements.

Existing Countryside Stewardship Scheme agreements and Environmentally Sensitive Area Management Agreements will become "Higher Level Stewarship Agreements" under the new scheme.

Information on how to apply is available in the handbooks that support Environmental Stewardship. There are separate handbooks for each element of the scheme, and an additional handbook for the Farm Environment Plans required for Higher Level Stewardship.

Environmental Stewardship agreements have quarterly start dates so that you can apply when it is most convenient for you. Agreement start dates and application deadlines from 2006 onwards are given in the scheme handbooks.

The application deadlines are to ensure RDS has sufficient time to process applications before the agreement start date. RDS guarantees that applications received by a given deadline will have the next agreement start date. Applications received after a deadline will be processed as quickly as possible. We will give you the earliest start date we are able to unless you ask for a specific later date. ELS applications that miss a deadline may still be able to get an earlier application start date especially if an application is received using the On-line process, which makes them quicker to process.