BFS66m to 12m habitat strip next to watercourses

What it actually is

Most of the buffer actions ask you to put grass beside the water. This one asks you to put trees and scrub there.

The strip is at least 6 metres wide and paid up to 12 metres, averaged across each land parcel, next to a ditch, river, stream or canal. You establish it either by letting trees and scrub regenerate naturally, or by planting native riparian species, or by doing both.

GOV.UK's stated aim is that throughout the year there is a habitat strip next to a watercourse with a mosaic of grassland vegetation and naturally colonised or planted native tree and scrub species which are near the watercourse and have an open canopy, with tussocky grasses allowed to develop, and without livestock, tracks or compacted areas. The page gives the purpose as reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss, increasing water filtration, slowing runoff, shading the watercourse, providing habitat and food for wildlife, and forming links between habitats.

Source: GOV.UK, BFS6 action page, checked 05/08/2026.

Our own way of putting that, which adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out: the agreement runs three years, but what you are being asked to establish does not come out again in three years. That is the thing to weigh, and the arithmetic below cannot weigh it for you.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page. Multiplied out:

Source: arithmetic on the payment rate shown at the top of this page, which comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date. The hectarages use the action page's own measurement rule, which is length in metres times width in metres, divided by 10,000. The 1,000 metres is an illustration.

At 6 metres, a hectare of strip is about 1,667 metres of watercourse. At 12 metres it is about 833 metres. The strip can be wider than 12 metres, but you are only paid for the 12 metre width.

Source: arithmetic on the widths given on the GOV.UK BFS6 action page, checked 05/08/2026.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Step one: what it costs to put in. There are two routes and they cost very different amounts. Natural regeneration costs nothing in materials. Planting native riparian trees and scrub costs whatever whips, guards, stakes, labour or contractor time come to on your ground, and that depends on species, spacing and how much of it you do yourself.

We have not found a published figure for that we would put on a page about money, so we are not going to invent one. The gap is deliberate. What matters for the sum below is that the planted route is not a nil cost action and the naturally regenerated one very nearly is, and the figures that follow have no establishment cost in them at all.

Step two: what the ground would otherwise return. Gross margins per hectare for England, non-organic, in the 2023/24 crop year. Variable costs have already been taken off these figures, so there is nothing further to deduct.

Source: Farm Business Survey, Crop Production in England 2023/24, Rural Business Research, England, non-organic, 2023/24 column, checked 02/08/2026. The winter wheat figures come from a sample of 572 farms.

These are arable figures. This action is also available on improved permanent grassland and on scrub, and we have not got a verified gross margin for grazing or silage on the same basis, so if that is your ground the comparison below is the wrong one and you will need to put your own number against the payment.

The agreement runs three years, so the comparison has to run three years too, and arable ground will not be in wheat for all three of them. Three rotations, worked from the crop figures above:

Source: arithmetic on the crop gross margins in step two, from the Farm Business Survey, Crop Production in England 2023/24, checked 02/08/2026. These three are illustrations. Work your own out from the same crop figures.

Step three: the gap, which on this action is unusually small.

Source: the payment rate at the top of this page set against the rotation averages above. The figures are subtraction. Establishment costs are not in them.

Against two of the three rotations this is within about £30 a hectare a year of what the ground returns as crop, before any allowance for the fact that the ground in question is a watercourse edge rather than a field average. On the money alone, that is as close as any of these actions gets.

Step four: the money is not the difficult part of this decision.

What follows is Tilth's own reading rather than scheme guidance, and it adds no requirement beyond the GOV.UK action page.

Every other figure on this site compares three years of payment against three years of cropping, because that is what the agreement covers and at the end of it the ground goes back. A grass strip can be sprayed off and ploughed in. That is not what this action leaves behind.

At the end of three years you have native trees and scrub on that strip, at whatever stage they have got to, plus deadwood you were asked to leave in place. Nothing in the action requires you to keep it after the agreement ends. But putting that ground back into cropping is a grubbing-out job rather than a cultivation, and the three-year arithmetic above does not carry that cost anywhere in it.

So the sum on this page is close, and the sum is not the question. The question is whether you would be content for that particular strip to be out of production for a good deal longer than three years. If the answer is yes, the money is fine. If the answer is no, no rate would make it right.

Two things to set against the crop figures above. Also Tilth's own reading.

The survey reports one winter wheat figure, not first and second wheat separately. A rotation with two wheats in it carries a second wheat at the same gross margin as the first, which is unlikely to be how it turns out on your ground. We have not found a published split to cite, so we have not applied a discount of our own invention. Read the rotation averages as the generous end for the crop.

It is one year, and not a strong one. The same report's 2022/23 column put winter wheat's gross margin at £1,570 a hectare against the £988 above for 2023/24. A three-year decision resting on a single crop year is a shaky thing, and this particular year was the lower of the two. Against that stronger year the gaps above widen.

What you actually have to do

Establish and maintain a habitat strip that is at least 6 metres wide and up to 12 metres wide, on average in each land parcel, buffering a ditch, river, stream or canal.

Establish it either through natural regeneration of trees and scrub, or by planting native riparian species, or both. Establish the strip within the first 12 months of the action's duration and maintain it throughout each subsequent year.

Manage it in a way that can reasonably be expected to achieve the action's aim, which includes cutting woody growth to create and maintain an open canopy along the bank, controlling the spread of injurious weeds, nettles or invasive non-native species, removing cut material when you cut to control woody growth or that spread, leaving any standing and fallen deadwood in place if it is safe to do so, and leaving any mature and veteran trees in place if it is safe to do so.

Source: GOV.UK, BFS6 action page, checked 05/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

On the habitat strip: no livestock access, no regular vehicular access, turning or storage such as storing bales or machinery, no fertilisers or manures, and no pesticides except herbicides used to weed wipe or spot treat injurious weeds, invasive non-native species, nettles or bracken.

You must not create or maintain hard standing, boardwalks or closely mown access routes running parallel to the ditch, river, stream or canal.

You must not cut or remove vegetation, unless you are doing so to control woody growth, weeds, nettles or invasive non-native species, to maintain existing access routes running perpendicular to the watercourse, or to establish the habitat strip on previously arable land.

Source: GOV.UK, BFS6 action page, checked 05/08/2026.

Where it can go, and any cap

Agricultural land below the moorland line, next to a ditch, river, stream or canal. The eligible combinations are arable land used to grow crops, temporary grassland and arable land lying fallow with an arable land cover, improved permanent grassland with permanent grassland cover, and scrub with an ungrazeable scrub or notional scrub cover.

The action is static, so it stays in the same place each year of the agreement. The strip can be wider than 12 metres but only 12 metres is paid.

Source: GOV.UK, BFS6 action page, checked 05/08/2026.

BFS6 is not one of the limited area actions under SFI26, so the 25 per cent of total agricultural area rule that applies to actions like CAHL2 and AHW9 does not apply to it. As with the other buffer actions, the real ceiling is how much watercourse you have.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI26 scheme rules and guidance, section 4.5, checked 05/08/2026.

Things worth watching

This section is Tilth's own reading of where this action is easy to get wrong. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and none of it adds a requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

Twelve metres is where this action and BFS1 meet, and the money is not what separates them. On arable ground beside a watercourse, twelve metres is the top of this action's paid width and the bottom of BFS1's. So on that one width you may have a real choice between a grass buffer strip and a wooded one. The two rates are close, and both move independently, so put the two panels side by side rather than taking a figure from us. The difference that actually matters is not the rate. It is that one of them leaves you a grass strip and the other leaves you trees.

Twelve months is not long for trees. The strip has to be established within the first 12 months. Natural regeneration is permitted and costs nothing, but it works on the ground's own timetable rather than the agreement's. Whether your ditch sides will throw up native trees and scrub inside a year is a question about your ground and your local seed sources, and it is worth answering properly before choosing the free route over the planted one.

This is not plant it and leave it. The aim asks for an open canopy, and the requirements ask you to cut woody growth to create and maintain it. There is no fixed date on that, which means it is an ongoing job you have to judge for yourself, and there is nothing afterwards to point at except what you actually did and when.

No route along the bank. Hard standing, boardwalks and closely mown routes running parallel to the watercourse are all out. Routes running across it, at right angles, can be maintained. If your current way to the far end of a field is along the ditch bank, that changes with this action, and it changes for every year of it.

Livestock have to be kept off. On arable ground that is usually nothing. On improved permanent grassland it means fencing, and fencing is a cost we have no verified figure for, so put your own in before comparing the payment against what the grazing returns.

Deadwood and veteran trees stay, if it is safe to do so. That is a judgement, and it is yours. Somewhere near a road, a footpath or a building it is worth writing down what you decided and why at the time you decided it.

It is static. No moving it for year two.

The width is an average across the land parcel. A stretch that narrows is only offset by a wider stretch somewhere else in the same parcel, so measure the whole parcel rather than the best of it.

Keeping the evidence

Also Tilth's own reading. GOV.UK sets the requirements; what follows is a practical suggestion about record keeping.

This action is harder to evidence than a grass strip, because the thing being paid for changes shape over the three years and there is no single annual operation like a cut that marks each year off.

What we would keep is the establishment record first: the method, the date, and if you planted, the species, the spacing and the invoice. Then a dated photograph record from fixed points along the strip, at roughly the same time each year, because a photograph sequence is the only practical way to show a mosaic of grassland and open-canopied scrub developing rather than just asserting it. Then the management passes: each time you cut woody growth to keep the canopy open, or treated weeds, with the date and what you did.

The two judgement calls are worth writing down at the time as well: why you decided a piece of deadwood or a mature tree was or was not safe to leave, and how you satisfied yourself the strip was established inside the first twelve months.

Tilth measures the strip off the field boundary you have already drawn, and keeps the planting record, the cutting passes and the photographs against that same strip so the sequence stays together.

The part only your own ground can answer

The arithmetic on this page comes out closer than on almost any other action here, and it still does not decide anything, because the real question is which of your watercourse edges you would be content to see under trees for longer than the agreement lasts. That is not a field question and it is not a gross margin question. It is a whole-farm map question, asked about the ground you crop worst and the water you care most about. Tilth holds your boundaries, your watercourses and your yield history in the same place, which is where a question like that gets answered. Request an invite.