The second tranche of the Tier 1 capital grant element of the Farm Business Improvement Scheme opens for applications today (Thursday) and closes at 4pm on 2 February 2018.

Applications for the 40% grant funding for equipment costing between £5,000 and £30,000 must be accompanied with a letter of support from a bank dated after 10 December 2017.

A certificate from the online safety course on the DAERA website, dated after 1 December 2017, is also required.

The points-based selection criteria is the same as the first tranche of Tier 1 and applications will again be ranked if the scheme is oversubscribed.

Reference price

Each of the 193 eligible items are listed with a reference price and a band number from one to three, which allocates 40 to 28 points based on how the item meets the themes of the scheme.

Points are also available for online applications (11 points), farmers aged 40 or less on 3 January 2018 (five points) and those with at least a level II qualification in agriculture (five points). Applicants are required to state how much grant aid they are applying for, with up to 39 selection points to be allocated under the “value for money” criteria, where the aid sought is up to 20% below the reference price.

First tranche

The first tranche of Tier 1 was oversubscribed with only 1,500 of the 3,500 applicants successful. A minimum of 74 selection points was required after applications were ranked.

To achieve that points score, all successful applicants had submitted quotes below the DAERA reference price to obtain “value for money” selection points.

Whether that is necessary again in the second tranche will ultimately depend on how many applications are received. While there might be less applicants given that some were successful in the first tranche, it should also be noted that more farmers might be in a position to spend this year. It is expected that there will be room for a similar number of applicants given that the available funding of £7.5m is the same as the first tranche.

The scheme is again administered by Countryside Services Ltd, which is holding a series of information sessions across NI in January which will focus on Tier 1 requirements and the application process.