England delinked farm payments cut for 2026 and 2027

Here is the plain-English version. The new Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2026 set the cuts for England's delinked farm payments for both 2026 and 2027. In practice, this is the government confirming that the old-style support is being almost completely switched off in its final two years. (legislation.gov.uk) The legislation on legislation.gov.uk says 98% will be cut from the first £30,000 of a delinked payment, and 100% will be cut from any amount above £30,000. The same structure applies in both years, so there is no gentler final year in 2027. Although the instrument extends to England and Wales as legislation, it applies in relation to England only. (legislation.gov.uk)

To see why this matters, we need one small step of background. The Rural Payments Agency says delinked payments replaced the Basic Payment Scheme, or BPS, in England in 2024, and 2027 will be the last year these payments are made. (gov.uk) These payments are called delinked because they are no longer tied to how much land someone farms now. GOV.UK guidance says the payment is based on a reference amount, usually the average BPS payment from 2020, 2021 and 2022, and eligible recipients do not need land or entitlements to receive it. (gov.uk)

**What this means in money terms:** if a business has a reference amount of £20,000, only 2% remains in 2026 and 2027, so the payment would be £400. If the reference amount is £30,000, the payment would be £600. GOV.UK's own example shows that a £40,000 reference amount would also end up as a £600 payment, because the first £30,000 is cut by 98% and the next £10,000 is cut by 100%. (gov.uk) That is a sharp jump from 2025. The 2025 regulations cut the first £30,000 band by 76%, not 98%, although anything above £30,000 was already reduced by 100%. In its 2025 explanatory memorandum, Defra said 80% of 82,000 delinked payment recipients were in the £30,000-or-less band before reductions, which shows how important that lower band is. (legislation.gov.uk)

This 2026 law also does a quieter piece of legal tidy-up. Regulation 4 says that when the 2023 delinked payments rules refer to a delinked payment for 2026 or 2027, they now mean the amount after these reductions have been applied. The reduced figure becomes the official figure used elsewhere in the scheme. (legislation.gov.uk) That may sound dry, but it matters. It stops one part of the rules working with the pre-cut amount while another part works with the post-cut amount. It is a reminder that statutory instruments often do two jobs at once: they make the political decision, and they clean up the legal wording so the system can still function. (legislation.gov.uk)

The bigger story sits behind the percentages. Defra's explanatory memoranda say England has been phasing out direct farm payments over the agricultural transition period from 2021 to 2027, moving away from the old EU Common Agricultural Policy. The government says the money released by these cuts will be redirected into other schemes for farmers and land managers, especially environmental land management and productivity support. (legislation.gov.uk) Ministers present that as a better use of public money because delinked payments are based on past subsidy levels rather than current environmental outcomes. If you are reading this from a farm business angle, though, the day-to-day point is simpler: a predictable income stream is being reduced to a very small final payment, and newer schemes are expected to fill the gap. That second point is our reading of the policy direction, based on Defra's own explanation of the switch. (legislation.gov.uk)

The timing is also clearer than the legal wording makes it sound. GOV.UK guidance says the Rural Payments Agency plans to make the 2026 and 2027 delinked payments as single payments from 1 August each year, and eligible customers do not need to submit a fresh annual application. The same guidance says you can still receive delinked payments even if you stopped farming after the 2023 BPS deadline, because eligibility rests on the earlier scheme rules and the reference amount. (gov.uk) **What it means:** if you are a learner trying to follow this story, do not get lost in the legal style. A regulation with one short table can still change real incomes in a big way. In this case, the table tells us that England's old BPS-style support is almost gone by 2026 and effectively finished by the end of 2027. (legislation.gov.uk)

The process matters too. The draft had to be approved by both Houses of Parliament, and the regulations come into force 21 days after they are made. In the explanatory note, the government also says no full impact assessment was produced because no significant impact on the private, voluntary or public sector was foreseen. (legislation.gov.uk) This is where media literacy helps. In government documents, 'no significant impact' can be a narrow statement about regulatory burden rather than a description of how a farmer's balance sheet will feel. When you read rules like these, it helps to ask two questions at once: what does the law technically do, and what does it mean in ordinary life? (legislation.gov.uk)