The structure of penalties for NI farmers who break new Farm Sustainability Standards has been published by DAERA.

From January 2026, the seven new standards will effectively replace the long-standing cross-compliance requirements for farm schemes in NI.

Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir described Cross Compliance as “complex” and said the Farm Sustainability Standards were “modern, simpler, robust and proportionate”.

The new standards are requirement of all farm schemes administered by DAERA, with penalties applied to payments when rules are broken.

The new rules cover areas such as prevention of water pollution, protection of habitats, animal welfare and livestock identification.

Penalty breakdown

The exact penalty that a rule breach attracts depends on the severity of the non-compliance and whether it is a first-time breach or a repeat offence.

In terms of severity, the new penalty matrix runs across five bands from “very low” to “very high”.

For all first-time breaches, regardless of severity, farmers will be required to complete mandatory online training before any farm payments are issued.

Breaches that are very low severity will bring no financial penalty in the first instance, with only mandatory training and a warning letter handed out.

For a repeat very low severity breach, a 1% penalty or £50 fine applies, whichever is higher. This rises to 2% or £100 for a second repeat breach, and 4% or £200 for a third repeat.

Heftier penalties apply for more severe rules breaches. For example, for first time offences, low severity rule breaches attract a 1% penalty or £50 fine, medium breaches start at 5% or £200 and high severity offences bring a 25% penalty or £1,000 fine.

At the top end of the penalty matrix, first time breaches that are deemed very high severity come with a 50% penalty or £2,100 fine, rising to 75% or £3,100 for a repeat offence.

A second repeat of a very high severity breach leads to a 100% penalty and exclusion from all schemes for the next year, and a third repeat brings about exclusion for the next two years.

Close collaboration

Minister Muir said the new penalty regime was developed in “close collaboration” with farmer representatives and was designed to “recognise the importance of education and understanding”.

“Our goal is to help farmers meet these standards. I am fully committed to supporting farmers to remain compliant to avoid penalties and receive their full payments,” he said.

When compared to the old Cross Compliance system, a significant change with the new regime is that breaches are no longer categorised as either “negligent” or “intentional”.

These definitions led to a large number of appeals over the years, as breaches that were deemed intentional brought penalties worth up to 100% of payments, whereas repeated negligent breaches were capped at 15%.