Nick Harvey, MP for North Devon, has demanded urgent answers from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) regarding the premature closure of applications for farm diversification funding from the Rural Enterprise Scheme (RES) in the South West.

The RES was set up by DEFRA in April 2001 and was supposed to run until June 2006.  However local Devon farmers whose applications were under review by the RES grant application panel have now been told there is no money left for the South West.

Commenting Mr Harvey said:

“Unfortunately this news signals just one more intolerable blow for farmers who are already facing unacceptably long delays in their Single Farm Payments.

“At a time like this I would have thought that DEFRA would be making every effort to ease the financial burden for farmers and yet here they have done just the opposite.  Farmers who have wasted time and money completing complicated application forms to the RES are now being told not to bother.

“The Rural Development Service (RDS) which administers the Scheme must have known that the funds wouldn’t last until June and should have pre-warned farmers of this fact.  Given that this did not happen then it seems only fair that the RDS consider all those applications which are pending.”