CHRW1Assess and record hedgerow condition

What it actually is

One thing before anything else, because it changes who this page is for. This action sits in the SFI 2024 expanded offer, and the SFI 2026 offer that followed it does not include it. Defra's published reasoning was that CHRW1 has very high uptake but is being removed because it does not deliver direct environmental benefits and therefore gives very low value for money. It went out as one of five planning actions taken out in the same round, alongside the IPM plan CIPM1, the nutrient management review CNUM1, the soil assessment CSAM1 and the moorland record CMOR1, with the same reasoning given for each. So if you hold CHRW1 in an existing agreement, this page is for you for the rest of that agreement's term; if you are planning a new application, this is not an action you can add to it. Check your own agreement, and treat your agreement documents as the authority on what you hold.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 50, checked 24/08/2026, and the Defra farming blog post of 24/02/2026, checked 24/08/2026, which is the source of the reasoning quoted and of the list of removed actions. Hedgelink's report on the published SFI 2026 offer, checked 24/08/2026, reports the same removal and reproduces the same Defra reasoning. GOV.UK have taken the CHRW1 action page down and its address no longer answers, so the print version stands in for it everywhere on this page.

The action itself: you assess the condition of all the hedgerows entered into the action, and you produce a written hedgerow condition assessment record for those hedgerows. The assessment and the record are completed within 12 months of the action's start date, and in each following year of the agreement you review the condition and update the record. A written condition assessment record already produced for those hedgerows in the last 5 years could be used to get paid.

GOV.UK's stated aim is that you understand the condition of your hedgerows, and effectively plan how they can be managed to improve their condition.

The payment was per 100 metres for one side of an eligible hedgerow per year, and the action could be done on one side or on both sides of a hedge you have management control of.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, pages 50 and 51, checked 24/08/2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page, and it is written in the past below because nobody can enter this action now. It was paid per 100 metres for one side of an eligible hedgerow per year, so the arithmetic runs on the metres entered, with a hedge entered on both sides counted twice:

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 lengths are illustrations; measure your own.

One side or both sides is the detail to get right on this page, because the three hedgerow actions in the SFI 2024 offer did not count their 100 metres the same way, and all three could sit in one agreement:

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, pages 50, 53 and 57, checked 24/08/2026, and GOV.UK, CHRW2 action page, checked 24/08/2026, which is live and still words CHRW2's payment for one side.

Is it worth it on your ground?

The unusual thing about this action is that the work it paid for could be done at no cost, using a tool GOV.UK's own guidance points at.

GOV.UK's hedgerow guidance, written to the SFI 2023 offer where the same action is coded HRW1, says there is no standard format for the record and that it could be a simple survey. It points at the People's Trust for Endangered Species Healthy Hedgerows survey, which PTES describe as a free rapid assessment hedgerow survey with an app for mobile phones and paper forms for anyone without a suitable phone. PTES put that survey at about 2 minutes a hedge, on 6 questions about the structure of the hedge. Their fuller Great British Hedgerow Survey they put at about 20 minutes a hedge, returning scores for wildlife, connectivity and structure alongside management advice.

On a real length: if the 4,300 metres in the table above is twenty separate hedges, the surveying at PTES's stated 2 minutes a hedge is about forty minutes of answering questions, plus however long it takes to walk to them, against £215 for the year. In years two and three the job is a review and an update rather than a fresh survey.

Source: GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for hedgerows, checked 24/08/2026, and PTES, Healthy Hedgerows survey and the comparison of their two surveys, both checked 24/08/2026. The hedge count and the arithmetic on it are illustrations and come from neither source.

The other half of the sum is the lookback. An assessment and written record already made for those hedgerows within the last 5 years could be used to get paid. That is a longer window than the sibling planning actions had: CIPM1's IPM plan and CNUM1's nutrient management review both counted only a plan or report written within the last 12 months. A farm that had surveyed its hedges four years earlier, for a Countryside Stewardship application or for its own planting plan, was inside CHRW1's window and outside the other two.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 51 for CHRW1, page 408 for CIPM1 and page 425 for CNUM1, checked 24/08/2026.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we have found in published sources about the practice this action pays for. It is not scheme guidance, it is not Defra's or the RPA's view, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. We have named every source and given the date we checked it. What it means for your ground is your decision.

This is one of the honest gaps, so it goes first. The action pays for an assessment and a written record, not for anything done to a hedge, and we have found no published assessment of whether producing a hedgerow condition record, as distinct from acting on what it says, changes anything in a hedge. Conservation Evidence, whose graded assessments anchor the evidence sections across this site, assess field practices rather than paperwork, and they hold no assessment of this one. The measured evidence for hedgerow work sits with the management, and on this site that is the CHRW2 page, which carries their assessments of managing hedgerows to benefit wildlife and of managing hedges to benefit birds with the full citations attached.

Source: the sourced evidence section of the CHRW2 page on this site, where those grades were read and cited. Conservation Evidence's own pages refuse automated requests, so they were not re-read for this page.

What the national survey found. UKCEH surveyed England's hedgerows for Natural England and reported that the proportion in good structural condition rose from 43 per cent in 2007 to 55 per cent in 2023. Hedges inside agri-environment schemes came out at 63.5 per cent against 46.8 per cent for hedges outside them. Over the same period the total length of managed hedgerow in England, put at around 400,000 kilometres, showed no statistically significant change.

Source: UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology for Natural England, An evaluation of Agri-Environment Scheme impact on hedgerows in England, as reported in UKCEH's press release of 15/11/2024, checked 24/08/2026.

What we have not found. Any study testing whether farms holding a written hedgerow condition record manage their hedges differently from farms that do not. Anything comparing one survey method's record against another's for what followed from it. And nothing measuring CHRW1 itself.

What the sources describe as the method. GOV.UK's hedgerow guidance, which the action page calls advice rather than requirement, sets out what a survey could record: the start and end point of each hedgerow, an estimate or measurement of the average height and width, an estimate of the average height of the base canopy, a count of the trees along the length being surveyed, an assessment of the hedgerow structure using the Adams Hedgerow Management Scale, and an estimate or measurement of the total length of gap within the hedgerow, not including gateways or access points. It says the survey can be done at any time of year, and that the structure of a hedge may be easier to see in the winter months, when there is less foliage.

The Adams scale itself, as PTES describe it, was created by Nigel Adams and sorts a hedge into ten structural categories, H1 to H10, which fall into four condition groups: over-trimmed, recently rejuvenated, dense and well managed, and tall and overgrown. PTES say no hedge can be held at the same point in the management cycle indefinitely without damage to its condition, and their Healthy Hedgerows tool places each hedge surveyed somewhere in that lifecycle and returns management options for it.

Source: GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for hedgerows, checked 24/08/2026, and PTES, hedge structures and the Adams Hedgerow Management Scale, and the Healthy Hedgerows survey page, both checked 24/08/2026.

What follows is Tilth's own reading, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The UKCEH figures are easy to misread, so it is worth saying what they are not. They compare hedges inside agri-environment schemes against hedges outside them, and what those schemes paid for was management, chiefly the cutting regime. Reading them as a measurement of what this action did would be reading them for something they did not measure. What they do give a CHRW1 holder is a yardstick: UKCEH put 55 per cent of England's hedges in good structural condition in 2023, so a record that comes back saying a hedge is over-trimmed or gappy is describing an ordinary result rather than a failure of husbandry.

The rest of our reading is that Defra's stated reason for removing the action, that it does not deliver direct environmental benefits, is a fair description of the action read on its own. A written record does not cut a hedge. What the record does is put each hedge somewhere in a cycle that both the scale GOV.UK points at and PTES's tool are built around, and a hedge's position in that cycle is the thing that decides whether the next decision is a light trim, a rest, or laying it. Whether that changed what the hedge cutter did the following winter is the part nobody appears to have measured, and it was always the farmer's part rather than the scheme's.

What you actually have to do

You must assess the condition of all the hedgerows entered into this action, and you must produce a written hedgerow condition assessment record for those hedgerows. You must complete the assessment and the written record within 12 months of the action's start date, and you must review the condition of the hedgerows and update the record in each subsequent year of the action's three year duration. If you had already assessed those hedgerows and produced a written condition assessment record in the last 5 years, you could use it to get paid for the action.

How the assessment is done was left open. GOV.UK's wording is that it is up to you how you do the action, as long as you follow the action's requirements, which are the ones identified by a "must", and do the action in a way that could reasonably be expected to achieve its aim.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, pages 50 and 51, checked 24/08/2026.

The survey method described further up this page is advice, and GOV.UK says so on the action itself: you may find it helpful to read the advice to help you do this action, but it is not part of the action's requirements. The voluntary advice was added in version 1.1 of the action, according to the print version's own change table.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 52, and How to do the SFI actions for hedgerows, both checked 24/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

An eligible hedgerow is a boundary line of shrubs, or both shrubs and trees, over 20 metres long and less than 10 metres wide. It can be newly planted, laid or coppiced, and woody growth on top of an earth or stone-faced bank counts, which brings Cornish and Devon hedges in. Gaps are allowed provided no single gap is more than 20 metres and the gaps together are no more than 10 per cent of the total length of that hedgerow. Where the gaps added up to more than 10 per cent, the action could be done on the total length only if the gaps were planted up during the action's three year duration, and the action page names Capital Grants for hedgerow gapping up (BN7) and planting new hedges (BN11) as help towards that.

The action could be done on either one side or both sides of an eligible hedgerow, and you must have management control of one or both sides depending on what you enter. Both sides of a roadside hedgerow, or of a hedgerow bordering a neighbour's land, could be entered where you have a legal right or obligation to maintain the hedgerow and can meet the action's requirements.

On protected land, GOV.UK gives two answers. Sites of special scientific interest: eligible, and you must get SSSI consent before you do the action. Historic and archaeological features: eligible, and you must get an SFI HEFER before you do the action.

Available area is not applicable, because this is a linear action, and you chose what length of eligible hedgerow to enter. The action is static, which means it is done at the same location in each year of its duration. It carries no limited area notice, so it never drew on the 25 per cent allowance shared by the capped actions.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, pages 50 and 51, checked 24/08/2026, and the same document's limited area notice, which is printed under the available area heading of each action that carries one.

GOV.UK's combinations heading is what you can do in land parcels with eligible boundaries entered into this action, so the one exclusion bites at parcel level rather than at the individual boundary:

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 52, checked 24/08/2026.

The exclusion runs both ways. BND1, maintain dry stone walls, lists all SFI 2024 actions except CHRW1, CHRW2, CHRW3 and WBD2 in land parcels with eligible boundaries entered into it.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 63, checked 24/08/2026.

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.

The record you already have may be the first year's work. The lookback here is 5 years, where CIPM1's IPM plan and CNUM1's nutrient management review counted 12 months. A hedgerow survey done for a Countryside Stewardship application, by a contractor, or for a planting plan, could cover the first year of this action if it covered the hedges entered and was written down.

The app's length is not the payment length. PTES say their Healthy Hedgerows app records a hedge as a straight line, which underestimates the real length, and that the hedge length for payments comes off the RPA maps. The survey and the measurement are two separate jobs done on the same walk.

One side or both sides is a decision with money attached to it. The payment followed the sides entered, not the sides walked. A farm that surveyed both sides of every hedge and entered one side was paid on one side, and the entered lengths are in the agreement documents rather than in the survey.

The review is three events, not one. The shape of the action is an assessment and a record in year one, then a review and an update in each of the other two years. A record carrying one date does not show that the year two and year three reviews happened.

BND1 costs the parcel, not the boundary. GOV.UK's combinations heading is about land parcels with eligible boundaries entered into the action, so a dry stone wall entered into BND1 anywhere in a parcel takes the hedges in that parcel out of CHRW1, not just the wall.

The record is the whole of the evidence. There is no invoice trail here and no photograph of work done, because nothing is done to the hedge. If the record goes missing, there is nothing else on the farm that shows the action happened.

Keeping the evidence

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

GOV.UK's requirement is that you keep the written record of your hedgerow condition assessment, on paper or digitally, and supply it if asked for it.

The practical suggestion is to keep three documents rather than one. A dated version for each year, with the earlier ones kept rather than overwritten and a note of what changed at each review, makes the annual reviews visible as three records rather than one record with three dates typed on it. Keying each entry to the same hedge names or numbers used for the entered lengths means the record and the agreement can be read against each other without a translation step.

Tilth holds your boundaries, lets you measure each hedge on the map, and stores documents and photographs against the parcel with dates, so the three years of records sit with the hedges they describe.

The part only your own ground can answer

What state your hedges are actually in, and whether you already know. The action's value was never the payment on its own; it was a description of an asset that runs for miles round most farms and gets looked at from a tractor cab in November and nowhere else. If a record already exists and is being kept up, this action is money for a job in hand. If it does not, the record outlives the agreement that paid for it, and the length of hedge it covers is the first number to settle. Tilth holds your boundaries and lets you measure hedge by hedge, so the length in the record and the length in the agreement can be the same number. Request an invite.