This post is by Guy Shrubsole. Image: West Penwith, Cornwall – one of over 50 Landscape Recovery pilots.

Since Brexit, the UK Government has been engaged in lengthy reforms of farm payments – moving from the old EU Common Agricultural Policy to a new system of Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS). Under ELMS, there are three tiers of schemes, the highest tier being Landscape Recovery (LSR). The point of all of these schemes is to pay ‘public money for public goods’ – in particular, to pay farmers and landowners to restore damaged habitats and ailing wildlife.

I’m a big fan of Landscape Recovery schemes, because they’re the most ambitious part of ELMS and could, if done right, make a major contribution to restoring ecosystems in England. Successive governments have, after all, promised to protect 30% of England for nature by 2030, and given we’ve only properly protected 3% so far, Ministers really have to get a bloody move on. Nature restoration on a grand scale is also essential to meet various legally-binding targets (for species recovery and habitat creation) under the Environment Act 2021, as recently reiterated by the Labour government in its new Environmental Improvement Plan.

However, since Landscape Recovery first started accepting applications in 2022, I’ve struggled to find much easily-accessible information on what projects are being funded under it. The first round of 22 LSR projects was announced in Sept 2022 (covering 40,000 hectares), followed by a second round of 34 projects in Nov 2023 (covering 200,000 hectares). But beyond unveiling the names of these 56 Landscape Recovery projects, totalling 240,000 hectares, there wasn’t much else to go on. Googling the names didn’t get me very far either: for the last few years, many of the projects haven’t had a public presence (and some still don’t). This is understandable up to a point: each LSR project undergoes a 2-year development phase, before the government decides whether to fund it into the implementation phase – with decisions still awaited for the majority of projects. But transparency matters too, and here’s why.

There were many reasons why I was wanted to see more information made public about the Landscape Recovery projects. Initially I was just curious to learn more about what habitats might get restored, particularly the 7 or 8 projects said to include provision for temperate rainforest restoration. But I also wanted to defend the Landscape Recovery scheme from its detractors, such as when loony Liz Truss’ mercifully short-lived administration tried to get rid of it. Or when Lib Dem MP Tim Farron, not best known for his ecological literacy, attacked Landscape Recovery as being “mostly taken up by very, very large estates”. Conversely, I wanted to know who was benefiting from LSR schemes – was it just big private estates, or a wide range of different landowners and tenant farmers? I also wanted to be able to hold the government to account: how much were the LSR projects contributing towards legally-binding environmental targets? Without maps, it was impossible to verify the government’s own broad-brush claims. Lastly, there was a point of principle: the public has a right to see how public money is being spent – and for more than a decade, the UK Government has published detailed maps of the recipients of agri-environment payments under the old EU schemes. Were our new, post-Brexit schemes going to end up being less transparent?

Rejected Freedom of Information requests

In early 2024 I decided to send a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to DEFRA, requesting maps showing the boundaries of the 56 Landscape Recovery projects, as submitted by each project in order to enter the initial development phase. Eventually I was told that whilst “the maps in question are held by Defra and are within scope” of the FOI Act, they would not release them to me because “when used with the publicly available Land Registry, they can be used to identify individual landowners.” Investigate landowners, me?! I objected that this wasn’t a valid reason to withhold the data (after all, it’s never stopped Natural England and the RPA from publishing their detailed maps of Countryside Stewardship recipients), but DEFRA ignored my protests. I tried again in Oct 2024, and this time was told there was “an ongoing policy review taking place to develop acceptable mapping products that are publicly accessible”. I waited another year, then sent a further FOI request in Nov 2025. This time I was told: “Further to your previous request, we have reviewed available digital tooling and are taking forward a workstream to develop and deliver a publicly accessible ArcGIS online mapping platform… we will seek to provide a publicly accessible interface by summer of next year [ie 2026]”.

Piecing together maps from individual projects

So, official digitised maps of all the Landscape Recovery schemes are on their way, but not until summer 2026 (and I won’t be holding my breath!). In the meantime, I decided to try a different route: have another go at searching for each LSR project online, to see if individual schemes had now published more information themselves. Happily, it turned out that many now had.

I was able to track down boundary maps for 37 of the LSR projects – although none of these were in GIS format (I was later sent a couple of digitised files), and some were very vague or low-resolution. 19 projects had no published maps. A majority of the projects declared their area publicly, such that I was able to account for nearly 195,000 hectares out of the 240,000 hectares that the Government has stated all 56 schemes sum to. However, I also found – via an FOI request, and via information online – that 3 of the 56 projects have now folded or decided not to progress further, removing some 8,444ha from the total.

Without GIS maps, it’s impossible to do any detailed analysis of either the habitat restoration potential or the landowners involved in the LSR projects. But I’ve recorded where landowners have identified themselves as being part of the schemes. They range from large institutional landowners like the Duchy of Cornwall to conservation charities like the National Trust, Wildlife Trusts and RSPB. Some involve large private estates like Lowther and Clinton Devon; others comprise extensive networks of small and medium-sized farms, such as the Breckland Farmers Wildlife Network or the Wylye Chalk Stream Project. I’d like to be able to do a more detailed assessment with proper maps, but I think we can safely say that Tim Farron’s attacks on LSR are pretty wide of the mark.

I’ve pulled together all the information I’ve found on Landscape Recovery projects in this Google Spreadsheet, and created this Google Map pinpointing the approximate locations of each LSR project, embedding the static maps I’ve found and a website source in each pin. LSR projects with maps are shown in blue, those without maps in purple, and the three projects that have folded are in red:

When the Government does finally publish its maps of Landscape Recovery schemes, I’ll aim to do a more detailed analysis. In the meantime, if any LSR project team sees this blog and wants to share more maps and details with me, I’d be very grateful!

Good luck to all the projects as they await the government’s decision on whether they’ll progress to the implementation phase. And fingers crossed that the funding announced for Landscape Recovery is only the start – and that there will be further rounds launched soon.