Third Round of England’s Peatland Restoration Grants Now Open
Environmental groups, charities, public bodies, and landowners in England can submit bids for grants to develop sites where peat can be restored.
The Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme has been set up to support the restoration of degraded peatland in England. Its objectives are to:
- Set 35,000ha of degraded peatland on a path to restoration by March 2025.
- Reduce emissions from peat by 5.7 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050, with continued reductions after that.
Capital works can be funded through the third round of the programme’s Restoration Grants. These grants fund landscape scale restoration work on degraded peatlands. The funds are for projects where any preparatory work and management plans are complete, or mostly complete.
Applicants can normally apply for up to 75% of the total project costs. In exceptional cases, applicants can apply for up to 85% of the cost. Applications for £1 million to £2 million across the life of the project are expected, however, Defra we will consider other amounts.
Environmental groups, local authorities, charities, public bodies, individual landowners, and organisations in England may apply. Natural England is looking for landscape-scale applications that work to restore the whole hydrological unit of a peatland. This is likely to involve a number of sites and landowners, so applications from partnerships are encouraged.
The deadline to submit applications for Round 3 of the Restoration Grant is 26 May 2023.
(This report was the subject of a GRANTfinder Newsflash.)
