The £225 million Capital Grants 2026 offer has closed, and thousands of farmers who spent the summer preparing applications are now waiting to hear whether theirs made the cut.
The scheme has closed. Here's what actually happened.
Defra confirmed this week that the 2026 Capital Grants budget has been fully allocated, closing the scheme to new applications. Around 17,000 applications were submitted by farmers and land managers across England, a strong response to a funding pot that was itself 50% larger than in 2025.
Roughly 9,500 of those applicants were applying for a Capital Grants agreement for the first time, and about a third of applications came from farms under 50 hectares. That spread suggests the scheme reached well beyond the usual pool of repeat applicants.
Sheep netting (FG2) was by far the most popular item, appearing in more than 11,000 applications and covering an estimated 20,000km of fencing to protect sensitive habitats and watercourses. Hedge planting (BN11) came second, featured in around 5,000 applications covering roughly 2,500km of new hedgerow. Wooden field gates (FG12) and hedgerow laying (BN5) also proved popular.
| Item | Applications | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| FG2: Sheep netting | 11,000+ | Approx. 20,000km of fencing |
| BN11: Hedge planting | Approx. 5,000 | Approx. 2,500km of hedgerow |
| FG12: Wooden field gate | 4,500+ | Individual gate installations |
| BN5: Hedgerow laying | Approx. 2,500 | Approx. 1,300km of hedgerow |
If you had an application in progress but had not submitted it before the scheme closed, it will not be processed. That is a hard line, not a grace period.
What happens now if you already applied
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has started assessing the applications it received and is issuing agreements, but with 17,000 applications in the system, Defra has said offers are likely to keep being issued through the rest of the year. There is no fixed date by which every applicant will hear back.
If the RPA asks you for supporting evidence or further information, you need to provide it within 10 days of your application being submitted. Missing that window was one of the most common reasons applications stalled last year, so if you are still waiting to hear anything, it is worth checking your Rural Payments account regularly rather than assuming no news is good news.
What to do if your application is successful
Getting an agreement offer is not the finish line. A few things happen in a fairly tight sequence, and missing a step can cost you the funding.
First, you need to accept. Guidance on the acceptance window has varied, with some Defra material referring to 30 calendar days and other guidance citing 20 working days, so treat the date printed on your own offer letter as the one that counts, not a general rule of thumb. If you do not sign and return the acceptance declaration in time, the offer is withdrawn.
Your agreement then usually starts on the first day of the calendar month after you accept. From that start date, you have three years to complete the capital works. You cannot start the work, and that includes buying materials, before the agreement start date.
A few things to sort out before you pick up a spade: if your application involved land in a Site of Special Scientific Interest, your agreement cannot start until Natural England has given consent. If historic or archaeological features are involved, you may need advice or consent from Historic England too, and your Historic Environment Farm Environment Record is the place to check this. If you are a tenant and your tenancy runs for less than five years from your agreement start date, you will need a landlord's countersignature and a Land Ownership and Control Form.
Capital Grants pay out after work is completed and claimed for, not before, so you need to fund the work yourself in the meantime. For applications worth more than £50,000, the RPA wants evidence upfront that your business can cover the cost, in the form of a letter from a chartered or certified accountant confirming access to sufficient funds.
And when you do carry out the work, keep the evidence as you go. Photographs of the finished item, invoices for materials and contractors, and confirmation that the work matches what was in your application all matter when you come to claim. This is exactly where applications got held up last year, with incomplete evidence slowing assessment and, in some cases, meaning applications could not proceed at all.
What we still don't know
Defra has not said whether there will be a further Capital Grants allocation this year if some accepted offers are later withdrawn, or what the shape of the 2027 offer will look like. It also has not clarified the exact acceptance deadline that applies scheme-wide, given the conflicting references to calendar days and working days in different guidance documents. Check your own offer letter rather than relying on general guidance for that one.
What to do now
If you are still waiting on a decision, keep your Rural Payments account details current and respond fast to any evidence request. If you have an offer, read it carefully for your exact acceptance deadline and agreement start date, and start lining up any SSSI, Historic England or landlord consents you will need before work can begin. If you do not have sufficient funds evidence sorted for a claim over £50,000, get that accountant's letter moving now rather than at claim stage.
This is where the admin tends to slip. Managing capital works evidence, land maps and consent requirements across several parcels, on top of everything else a farm business has running, is exactly what JustFarm is built for. It brings your mapping, your planned works and your supporting evidence into one place, so when a claim or an inspection comes round, you are not hunting through old emails and phone photos. You can create a free account to get your capital works evidence organised now, or explore the SFI page to see how the same approach applies across your wider agreement. If you are managing several agreements or advising multiple farms, view pricing for the tools built around exactly this.
Good evidence is built over time, not assembled the week before a claim. With your agreement now moving toward a start date, this is the moment to get that habit going.
