CIGL1Take grassland field corners or blocks out of management

What it actually is

You choose corners or blocks of your grassland and stop managing them: no grazing, no cutting, no fertiliser, manure or lime, and no pesticides, beyond herbicide spot treatment of injurious weeds, invasive species, soft and hard rush, nettles or bracken, and localised cutting for the same purpose. Nothing that disturbs breeding birds. The grass is simply let be, and tussocks build. Existing grassy corners already like this can come into the action.

GOV.UK's stated aim is field corners or blocks where tussocky grass can develop, providing year-round habitat for wildlife and supporting integrated pest management near cropped areas.

The action is static, so the corners stay where they are for the whole three years, and it is one of the limited area actions, sharing the 25 per cent ceiling described further down.

Source: GOV.UK, CIGL1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

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 2 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

There is no seed, no establishment and no annual operation, so the sum here has two sides only, and both are yours.

What the ground gives up. The corner's current value is its grazing days or its share of the silage, and that is a different number on every farm and every corner. The corners this action was built for, the wet hole, the shaded wedge behind the wood, the awkward triangle the mower fights, give up the least, because they were feeding the least. A productive block in the middle of a good field gives up real forage, and the payment has to clear that bar.

What the payment is. A flat rate on ground that stops costing anything to run: no fertiliser on it, no cutting passes over it, no stock day-to-day. For the awkward corners, the arithmetic is about as one-sided as this site gets.

The commitment is the thing to price. Static means the same corners for three years, and three years of no grazing means fencing or reliable stock exclusion where stock run in the same field, which on some farms is the only real cost this action has. Where a corner cannot practically be kept stock-free, it is not a candidate, whatever the arithmetic says.

This reasoning is Tilth's own and adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

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.

The fit note first. Conservation Evidence's nearest assessment is Create uncultivated margins around intensive arable or pasture fields, which covers naturally regenerated, unmanaged margin ground on both arable and grass farms. A margin is not a corner and much of the evidence is from arable settings, but unmanaged, naturally developing grassy ground is the practice in both, and pasture fields are inside the assessment's scope, so the fit is reasonable rather than perfect.

The graded assessment. Conservation Evidence, based at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, summarises the published studies behind individual conservation actions and has independent subject experts score each one. Creating uncultivated margins comes out in their top category, Beneficial, on 49 studies, with 100 per cent for effectiveness, 63 per cent for certainty, and harms not assessed. That makes this one of the few actions on this site carrying a 100 per cent effectiveness score, though with a lower certainty than skylark plots or the flower strips. Effectiveness scores only the size and direction of the reported effects, and Conservation Evidence say themselves it does not consider the quantity or quality of the studies. Certainty is the separate score for how many studies there are, how well built they are and how much ground they cover.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 63, Create uncultivated margins around intensive arable or pasture fields, Farmland Conservation synopsis, checked 23/08/2026. Cite as Dicks et al. (2020), Farmland Conservation, pages 283 to 321, in What Works in Conservation 2020, Open Book Publishers.

What the studies found, both ways. Of 39 studies comparing uncultivated margins with other options across eight European countries, 24 found benefits to some wildlife group. Nineteen found more invertebrates, bees included, or higher plant diversity than conventionally managed margins or other margin options; one found more small mammal species than meadows and farmed grasslands; four reported positive associations with birds, including food provision. In one East Anglian study, uncropped headlands held an average of 210 spiders, 260 ground beetles and 50 true bugs per site against 100 to 160, 70 to 160 and 15 to 30 in sprayed headlands and crops, with ground beetles twice as abundant in the crop next to the unmanaged ground as next to sprayed headlands, which is the integrated pest management aim of this action being measured directly.

The other way: fifteen studies found naturally regenerated ground carried lower plant or invertebrate richness than sown margins, six found no difference against cropped or sown ground, five reported declines in species richness and invertebrate numbers in naturally regenerated margins over time, and seven reported increased weed abundance. One trial found six year old naturally regenerated margins held more invertebrate predators, mainly spiders, than one year old ones, and studies of cutting found it negative or neutral for invertebrates.

Conservation Evidence say themselves that studies are not directly comparable or of equal value, and that study size, design, reported metrics and relevance to your own situation matter more than "simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation".

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 63, key messages and supporting evidence from individual studies, checked 23/08/2026.

On the tussocks themselves. The thing this action grows, dense tussocky grass with a litter layer, is the thing beetle banks are built from, and the beetle bank evidence measured it: Thomas and others found the plant litter, dead grass and tussock that gamebirds nest in covered 61 per cent of the banks against 27 per cent of ordinary field margins. Tussock is the structure the predatory beetles and spiders overwinter in, which is what stands behind the action's IPM framing.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 651, Create beetle banks, supporting evidence from individual studies, checked 23/08/2026.

What we have not found. Nothing measuring CIGL1 itself, or corners as against margins. Nothing from improved grassland settings specifically for most of the invertebrate findings. And no study of the three year timescale this action runs on, though the six-years-beats-one-year predator finding points the direction time takes it.

What the sources say makes it work better. Time, most clearly: the one direct comparison found older unmanaged ground held more predators than new, and the declines reported elsewhere were in plant richness rather than the tussock structure this action is for. And restraint with the mower: cutting was negative or neutral for invertebrates in the studies that tested it, which sits comfortably with an action whose requirement is to not cut at all beyond weed control.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 63, key messages and supporting evidence from individual studies, checked 23/08/2026.

What follows is Tilth's own reading of how those findings sit against this action, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The sown-beats-unsown finding is the one to read carefully, because it is not the criticism of this action it first appears. Fifteen studies found naturally regenerated ground botanically poorer than sown margins, and that is a real result, but it is a comparison between two things you might sow on bare ground. CIGL1 starts from an established grass sward and asks for structure, not botany: tussocks, litter and cover, the things the beetle bank measurements found in abundance wherever grass is left alone. If your aim were a flower-rich corner, the scheme has other actions for that, ours is the CIPM2 page. This one is paying for the rough corner, and rough is what the evidence says develops.

The weed finding is the honest cost, seven studies of increased weeds, and the action anticipates it, which is why the spot treatment allowance for injurious weeds, rush, nettles and bracken exists. A corner watched once a season with a knapsack for the docks and thistles that matter is the whole maintenance burden of this action, and skipping that watch is how a paid corner becomes a seed source the neighbouring field resents.

And static is an advantage here, not a constraint. The predator finding says unmanaged ground gets better with age, so three years in one place is the version of this action the evidence favours, and the corner that suits it is the one you would happily never farm again anyway.

What you actually have to do

Leave the entered corners or blocks unmanaged: uncut and ungrazed, with no fertilisers, manures or lime, and no pesticides, except herbicides to spot treat or localised cutting to control injurious weeds, invasive plant species, soft rush, hard rush, nettles or bracken. Do nothing likely to disturb breeding birds. Existing grassy corners or blocks that already meet the requirements can be entered. Do this in each year of the three year duration, in the same location, since the action is static.

Source: GOV.UK, CIGL1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

Temporary grassland under TG01 and improved permanent grassland under PG01, below the moorland line, registered and declared with compatible codes. SSSIs need Natural England's consent before agreement. Land with historic or archaeological features is not eligible on the feature itself, though the rest of the parcel can be.

CIGL1 is one of the ten limited area actions under SFI26, sharing the 25 per cent ceiling on your farm's total agricultural area with CIPM2, CAHL1, CAHL2, CAHL3, CIGL2, WBD3, AHW7, AHW9 and AHW11. How the 25 per cent limit works.

Source: GOV.UK, CIGL1 action page, checked 23/08/2026, and GOV.UK, SFI26 scheme rules and guidance, section 4.5, checked 23/08/2026.

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.

Ungrazed means fenced, in practice. Stock in the same field do not respect an imaginary line around a corner. Temporary fencing is the unglamorous enabler of this action on grazed ground, and its cost and hassle belong in the decision. Fields that are cut but not grazed dodge the problem entirely.

Pick corners you can leave for three years without regret. Static, with no way to move. The corner due for a re-seed, drainage work or a gateway change in the next three years is the wrong corner.

Watch the weeds before the neighbours do. The evidence says weed abundance rises in unmanaged ground, and the action hands you the tools, spot treatment and localised cutting for the named species. Once a season with a sprayer lance over each corner is cheap insurance, and note it in the records when you do it, because it is the one operation this action ever generates.

Rough is the point, and it is worth saying out loud. By year two an unmanaged corner looks abandoned to anyone who judges farms by tidiness. The tussock and litter are what the payment buys and what the wildlife uses. A word with anyone who mows on your behalf saves a well-meant tidy-up undoing a year of it in an afternoon.

It counts against the 25 per cent. Farms stacking the limited area actions need these corners in the same sum as the arable ones before anything is promised to an agreement.

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 examples are field operations at land parcel level with associated invoices, and photographs or other documentation showing the aim is being achieved.

Like the no-till page, this action's evidence is mostly about absence, and the record that shows it is a photograph per corner per year, same spot, same direction, showing the tussocks building. The only operations to record are the spot treatments, each with its date, target and product, because those are the one thing you are allowed to do and the record shows you did no more than that.

Tilth lets you map the corners as their own areas, attach the yearly photographs to them, and record the odd spot treatment against the parcel, so the whole action's paper trail is a handful of pictures and the occasional line.

The part only your own ground can answer

Which corners earn less as grass than this action pays. Every farm has ground the stock barely touch and the mower resents, and the honest way to find it is to look at where the fields actually earn, not where the map says they should. Tilth holds your fields, your stock movements and your cutting records together, which is what shows you the corners the farm has already half given up on. Request an invite.