Deadline: September 18, 2026
The focus areas of the grant include facilitating the rewetting of lowland peat through infrastructure and water control measures, creating or strengthening local collaborations with lowland peat stakeholders, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from lowland peat, delivering wider environmental benefits such as biodiversity, flood and drought mitigation, promoting sustainable land use, and supporting a landscape-scale mosaic of sustainable land uses including conventional farming at higher water tables, paludiculture, and peatland or wetland habitat restoration.
The implementation grant scheme provides funding for projects that install infrastructure and water control measures to safely raise water tables in lowland peat soils. Projects must support changes in water management that enable more sustainable land management activities while including plans for the long-term maintenance of the outcomes.
Applicants are required to demonstrate the area of peat where water tables will be raised and provide evidence of the extent and depth of peat within the project area. They must also explain the optimum and achievable water table or watercourse levels, identify any site constraints and how these will be addressed, and describe the infrastructure and management arrangements that will support long-term water table changes.
Projects should also include details of the monitoring methods that will be used to ensure the implemented changes are maintained over time. Where necessary, applicants must explain the mitigation measures that will address potential impacts on neighbouring areas, environmental considerations, unintended consequences, or different management requirements for rewetted land.
Projects are eligible if they focus on delivering an implementation plan for drained lowland peat soils in England where water tables are lower than the optimum level for reducing carbon emissions. The proposed activities must not be legally required, must not receive duplicate funding from other sources, and must be submitted by an eligible organisation.
Eligible organisations include charities, not-for-profit organisations, public bodies such as local authorities and internal drainage boards, land managers, businesses, and commercial enterprises.
For more information, visit GOV.UK.
