You can now apply for an Animal Health and Welfare grant through the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) 2024.
Last month, I blogged about the FETF and improvements we've made to it. I also included a link to the official FETF 2024 guidance, which explains that there are 3 types of grants on offer to help you buy equipment or technology to:
You can apply for a grant from each of the 3 themes. We recently updated the guidance. GOV.UK will always be the place to find the very latest guidance for all our schemes.
In this post, I’ll give a quick recap of the Animal Health and Welfare grant and let you know how to apply.
Part of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway , which offers a range of support to farmers, this particular FETF grant goes towards the cost of items on a list that help to improve animal health and welfare. We developed this list with farmers, vets and other experts.
There are over 130 items on the list and 29 are new additions. You'll see a range of items: from mobile cattle handling systems to enclosed piglet creeps to poultry perches. So, if you’re a cattle, sheep, pig or poultry farmer, it’s worth looking at the items. If you’re a contractor to these sectors, you can apply too.
You can apply for a minimum of £1,000 and a maximum of £25,000. We'll pay a percentage of the cost depending on the item. The percentages are in the guidance.
For many items, this percentage is an increase on last year. This funding will go towards either:
T he deadline to apply is midday 1 May 2024.
The fund is competitive. If you decide to apply, you can increase your application score by providing evidence that you’ve discussed your application with a vet.
You can get vet advice by telephone, email, or as part of a vet visit. You may be eligible to apply for a fully-funded vet visit as part of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) annual health and welfare review .
You must receive advice on your application after 1 January 2024 and before 1 January 2025 for it to be eligible for the increase.
You’ll need to provide your vet’s details, the date of the discussion and permission for us to contact your vet when you apply.
Your application should take around 20 minutes to complete. You’ll receive an acknowledgement email within 24 hours of applying – you may need to check your junk folder for emails about your application.
The RPA will allocate funding once all the applications have been received and scored. You may not receive any, or all, of the funding you apply for.
If your application is successful, the RPA will send you a Grant Funding Agreement (GFA). GFAs for each grant will be sent separately. If your application is unsuccessful, the RPA will write to you to tell you why.
Use the Farming Investment Fund service to accept your GFA by the deadline which will be in the email. You’ll need to select each grant to accept each GFA.
We've set out the steps you’ll need to follow to claim your FETF 2024 grant payment on GOV.UK .
We’re planning 2 more opportunities to apply for productivity, slurry and animal health and welfare grants later this year.
The item specifications and their costs will be the same in each application window. The budget for each grant is split evenly across the application windows.
If your application falls below the scoring threshold and is unsuccessful, the RPA will reject it. You will be able to apply again.
If you've accepted a grant funding agreement (GFA) to buy items from a grant, you cannot apply again for the same grant in 2024.
Finally, don’t forget the window to apply for productivity and slurry management grants will close midday 17 April.
Last week, our team hosted a webinar covering the FETF grants.
We will blog again soon with answers to the questions that were submitted at the webinar.