Evaluation of cross compliance in England

This evaluation covers the first four years of the application of cross compliance conditions to all farmer recipients of the Single Farm Payment (SFP) under Pillar 1 of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. The main findings are that the compliance level is generally high and that some measures have stimulated significant changes and benefits, although lack of additionality was noted for one measure. The lessons learnt include the need for farmers to be convinced of the rationale for and the public good benefits of certain measures, greater clarity in formulating requirements, more help to farmers with some record-keeping tasks, more care to avoid potential overlaps with Pillar 2 measures, and a separate inspection process, outside the mandatory 1% inspection monitoring fraction, for reported breaches of standards.