England drought support gives farmers £65m boost

Climate change can sound distant until it shows up in a field. In a GOV.UK announcement, the government says farmers across England will get £65 million in extra help after the driest July on record in England and Wales, with new measures on water, crop protection and farm payments. That matters beyond the farm gate. When dry weather hits this hard, it affects what can be grown, what animals can be fed and how much pressure falls on individual farm businesses. The package was announced after Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired COBR, the government's emergency response committee, on extreme heat, wildfires and drought.

The Prime Minister's message is simple: farmers should not be left to carry climate risk on their own. Visiting a farm in the South West with Farming Minister Stephen Morgan, Burnham is expected to point to earlier harvests, weaker yields and the strain of rising costs with little rain in sight. If you are wondering why this has reached the top of government, food production is the answer. Ministers are framing the ability to grow food in the UK as a matter of national security, which tells you this is no longer being treated as a seasonal farming problem. Environment Secretary Angela Eagle has also described the pressure on farm businesses as some of the toughest seen in decades.

So what is in the package? The biggest single sum is an extra £50 million for the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026, taking that budget to £290 million. The government is also setting aside up to £15 million for on-farm reservoirs, promising easier access to water during drought conditions and offering more flexibility in environmental schemes so farmers do not lose payments when dry weather makes normal activity impossible. The wider £65 million package is being funded through prioritisation within Defra's farming budget, according to GOV.UK. There is also a planning policy angle: ministers say they will make it easier to build reservoirs by cutting unnecessary barriers and updating planning guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework due on Monday. For readers who do not spend their time with planning documents, that is a sign this is about long-term water storage as well as this summer's emergency.

One of the most practical changes involves land already in environmental schemes. Some farmers are paid to protect wildlife habitat and are usually not allowed to graze or cut that land until later in the year. In a drought, when grass has barely grown elsewhere, those rules can turn into a direct animal welfare problem. **What this means:** farmers affected by drought will be allowed more room to use that land without automatically losing payments, as long as the soil is not damaged. The government says the same kind of flexibility was used in the 2022 drought, and that it will apply across the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Countryside Stewardship and older stewardship agreements.

Water rules are another part of the story, and they can sound technical until you see what they do in practice. Farm abstraction, which means taking water from rivers or other sources for use on the farm, is controlled by licences. Those licences already include 'hands-off flow' limits, which stop abstraction when river levels fall too low. According to the Environment Agency, there were more than 1,500 licence restrictions in the week to 12 August, including 302 licences in East Anglia hit by Section 57 rules that can restrict spray irrigation during drought. Those river protection limits are staying in place. What will change, the government says, is the speed and paperwork around licence variations, plus simpler ways for farms to share water between holdings when supplies are tight.

Reservoirs sit in the middle of this debate because they turn a short burst of rain into water that can be used months later. The government's new offer on on-farm reservoirs is smaller than the national reservoir building programme, but it matters because storage on the farm can help growers manage dry spells without waiting for a wider system to catch up. This is where climate adaptation meets planning policy. The government says it is already backing nine new reservoirs and will keep working with the National Farmers' Union on an evidence-led review of permitted development rights for on-farm reservoirs. In plain terms, ministers are trying to make storage easier to approve as dry summers become more common.

There is an important limit to keep in mind. This package applies to England only, because farming policy is devolved. Drought status in England is set by the Environment Agency, and the current footprint is huge, stretching across areas including East Anglia, Kent, the Thames Valley, Wessex, Devon and Cornwall, with around three-quarters of England classed as in drought. The government is also trying to calm fears about food supply. Ministers say the UK food system remains resilient and that national food security is not expected to be affected by this spell of dry weather. That reassurance is useful, but it should not hide the local damage: a resilient national system can still contain badly hit farms, lost income and difficult choices on the ground.

Set against all of this is a larger climate warning. Burnham says this is the third drought in five years, and that is the sentence worth sitting with. When extreme weather keeps repeating, emergency help cannot be the only answer. Rules, water storage, land management and farm payments all have to change with it. The government says it is investing almost £100 million to improve the country's response to wildfires and other extreme weather, while continuing work with water companies, environmental organisations, the National Drought Group and the Farming and Food Partnership Board. **What you can take from this:** drought policy is no longer just about today's fields. It is about who carries the cost of climate change, and whether public policy is willing to share that burden fairly.