The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs has made the Farm Sustainability Standards (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025 (SR 2025 No. 191). Signed on 28 November 2025, the instrument comes into operation on 1 January 2026 and makes corrective and clarifying changes to the principal regulations before the scheme goes live. The powers cited are sections 48 and 50(3)(a) and paragraph 5 of Schedule 6 to the Agriculture Act 2020.
Schedule 1 of the principal rules is now presented as “Part 1”, with consequential renumbering to improve internal coherence. The amendment also restates the duty that the standards must be underpinned by environmental protection requirements and that minimum legal standards for beneficiaries are set out in legislation as part of the scheme architecture.
The penalty framework carried in the principal regulations is unchanged in substance but is now cross‑referenced and tidied. For any non‑compliance the minimum response remains a warning letter and completion of mandatory training, and payments are withheld until that training is completed. In recurrent cases, the maximum penalty can reach 100% of all payments made or due in the scheme year, with exclusion from all schemes for the two immediately following scheme years.
To align legacy EU provisions retained under the Windsor Framework with Northern Ireland’s scheme structure, references in the EU Implementing Regulation to “this Title” are mapped to “Schedule 1, Part 1”, and certain references are future‑proofed by adding “as amended from time to time”. The principal rules also remove “extent” and “permanence” from the former severity triad for cross‑compliance so that only “severity” is assessed under the NI scheme.
Control‑report procedures in Article 72 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 809/2014 are adjusted. The first subparagraph of paragraph 4 is omitted and references to transmitting reports to a “coordinating authority” are deleted, reflecting a streamlined flow to the paying agency in Northern Ireland. These edits remove language that is not required for DAERA’s administrative model.
The amendment also revises the negligence provision in Article 74 of the EU Implementing Regulation. The word “negligent” is removed from paragraph 1 and wording that capped combined reductions at 5% is deleted. In practice this disapplies the EU cap for aggregated negligent non‑compliances and aligns enforcement with the NI penalty matrix already set in domestic law.
For compliance teams, two operational points are immediate. First, every first‑time breach triggers mandatory training and no payment is released until the training is completed. Second, recurrences are measured within a three‑year window and can escalate to full loss of payments for the year of determination plus a two‑year exclusion, so incident logging and timely remediation matter.
DAERA positions the standards within the Sustainable Agriculture Programme and has described them as simpler than the previous cross‑compliance regime while maintaining environmental, public and animal health safeguards. With go‑live on 1 January 2026, the department’s message is to prepare for the new matrix and training requirement.
The scheme applies to 2026 aid applications and subsequent years, with “scheme year” defined as 1 January to 31 December. SR 2025 No. 191 is sealed by a senior DAERA officer, and the Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954 applies to the instrument, consistent with standard drafting practice for NI statutory rules.