The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has made the Farm Sustainability Standards (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025 (SR 2025 No. 191). The instrument was sealed on 28 November 2025 and comes into operation on 1 January 2026, updating the Farm Sustainability Standards Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025 (SR 2025 No. 165).
Made under sections 48 and 50(3)(a) and paragraph 5 of Schedule 6 to the Agriculture Act 2020, the amendment refines the statutory architecture and sanctions within the Farm Sustainability Standards. The Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954 applies, maintaining standard interpretive rules for Northern Ireland legislation.
The instrument tidies the structure of SR 165 so that references to “the Schedule” become “Schedule 1”, the heading to that Schedule now includes “Part 1”, and the paragraphs formerly numbered 12–14 are renumbered 1–3. The objective is administrative clarity for beneficiaries and scheme administrators.
A revised paragraph 1(6) confirms that DAERA must underpin the Farm Sustainability Standards with environmental protection requirements, and that the minimum standards for beneficiaries are to be set out in legislation as part of the standards. This puts the environmental baseline in binding law rather than solely in guidance.
The sanctions framework is recalibrated. The minimum penalty for any non‑compliance is a warning letter issued by or on behalf of the competent authority alongside completion of mandatory training. For recurrences, the maximum penalty may reach 100% of all payments made or due in the scheme year concerned, with exclusion from payment across all schemes for the two following scheme years.
Cross‑references to EU‑derived provisions are corrected so that references to “this Title” are replaced with “Schedule 1, Part 1” in Article 96(3) and (4). Additional wording-“as amended from time to time”-is inserted in Articles 67(1)(b) and 71(2), allowing the cross‑references to track future updates to the domestic schedule without further instruments.
Further technical edits streamline enforcement provisions. Article 65(1)(d) is curtailed from the word “extent” to the end of the sentence; Article 72(4) loses its first subparagraph and removes references to a “co‑ordinating authority” in the second and third; and in Article 74, the first paragraph of 74(1) is removed, the term “negligent” is omitted, and wording on “percentages of” reductions is deleted. In practice, this shifts penalty calibration away from EU percentages and aligns it with the Northern Ireland scale set in the Regulations themselves.
The amendments sit within the move away from EU cross‑compliance and into the Farm Sustainability Standards from 1 January 2026. SR 165 sets out the standards that now underpin payment eligibility, replacing Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions and Statutory Management Requirements for breaches occurring from that date.
For beneficiaries, the operational effect is straightforward: a first breach will normally trigger a formal warning and compulsory training, while repeated non‑compliance risks full loss of payments for the relevant year and a two‑year exclusion across schemes. For administrators, the clarified cross‑references support consistent application of checks and penalties alongside inspection powers already provided in SR 165.