CIPM1Assess integrated pest management and produce a plan

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 CIPM1 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 nutrient management review CNUM1, the soil assessment CSAM1, the hedgerow assessment CHRW1 and the moorland record CMOR1, with the same reasoning given for each. So if you hold CIPM1 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 407, checked 23/08/2026, 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. Oakbank's report on the SFI 2026 offer, checked 23/08/2026, reports the same removal.

The action itself: a BASIS qualified adviser, holding the relevant BASIS Certificate in Crop Protection, assesses your current approach to managing pests, weeds and diseases across the farm, talks through where integrated pest management could work for you, and produces a written IPM plan. If you hold the qualification yourself, you can do it yourself. A plan produced by a qualified adviser within the previous 12 months counts. The first assessment and plan happen within 12 months of the action's start date, and the assessment and plan are then reviewed each year of the agreement.

GOV.UK's stated aim is that you understand the benefits, costs, impacts and risks of your current approach to pest, weed and disease management, and develop an IPM strategy suited to your own farm.

It is an agreement-level action, one payment for the whole business rather than a rate on particular parcels, and it needs at least one land parcel below the moorland line linked to your SBI.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 407, checked 23/08/2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page. It is a flat payment for the agreement, not a rate per hectare, so it is the same money on 40 hectares as on 900:

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 407, checked 23/08/2026. The rate shown at the top of this page comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date.

Is it worth it on your ground?

There is no published standard fee for a BASIS adviser's assessment visit and written plan, so we are not going to invent one; what an agronomist charges for the work is a question for your agronomist. But the shape of the sum is unusually clear, and it runs on three questions.

First, who advises you now. If a BASIS qualified agronomist already walks your crops, the assessment is a conversation with someone who already knows the farm, and the practical cost may be part of a relationship you already pay for. If nobody does, the cost is a bought-in visit, and the BASIS Find an Adviser tool is where GOV.UK points you.

Second, whether a plan already exists. A plan produced by a qualified adviser within the previous 12 months satisfies the first year, which for some farms makes year one's payment almost pure margin. The Voluntary Initiative's IPM plan templates, which the GOV.UK guidance points to, are free.

Third, the flat rate itself. Because the payment does not scale with area, it covers the cost of the adviser's time on a small farm many times more comfortably than a per-hectare payment would, and the work does not get three times harder on a farm three times the size. Whatever your adviser charges, the payment is the same.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 407, and How to do the SFI actions for integrated pest management, checked 23/08/2026. The 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.

This page is honest about being different from the others on this site. The other actions pay for something done to land, and for most of them somebody somewhere has measured what that something does. This action pays for an assessment and a document, and we have found no published assessment of whether producing an IPM plan, as distinct from doing the things a plan recommends, changes any outcome on a farm. 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.

What has been assessed is the toolbox the plan chooses from. The GOV.UK guidance's own examples of what a plan might cover, rotations, resistant varieties, flower-rich margins for natural predators, lead directly to measured territory: our CIPM3 page carries the Conservation Evidence assessments of companion cropping and undersowing, where undersowing comes out Likely to be beneficial on British and northern European studies, and our CIPM4 page carries the AHDB and long-term Sussex Study evidence around managing without insecticides. The evidence for IPM lives with the practices, and this action's job is to get a qualified person choosing among them on your farm.

Source: GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for integrated pest management, checked 23/08/2026, and the sourced evidence sections of the CIPM3 and CIPM4 pages on this site.

What we have not found. Any study testing whether farms that hold a written IPM plan manage pests differently, spend differently on chemistry, or see different outcomes from farms that do not. That is not a claim the plans do nothing; it is a statement that nobody appears to have measured it, which for a payment of this size is worth knowing.

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

Our reading is that the value of this action was always going to depend on the conversation rather than the document. An hour walking the farm with a good adviser, asking why each product is in the programme and what would happen without it, is worth having, and the scheme paid for three of them. A template filled in to bank a payment is worth what templates are worth. Defra's removal of the action from the 2026 offer suggests they concluded too much of the uptake was the second kind, and the fairest thing we can say is that which kind yours is has always been in your hands.

What you actually have to do

Within 12 months of the action's start date, have a BASIS qualified adviser, one holding the relevant BASIS Certificate in Crop Protection, assess your current crop management practices for pests, weeds and diseases, discuss where integrated pest management could work on your farm, and produce a written IPM plan. You can do this yourself if you hold the qualification. A plan produced by a qualified adviser within the previous 12 months counts for the first year. In each following year of the three year duration, reassess and review the plan.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 407, checked 23/08/2026.

The guidance adds, as advice rather than requirement, that there is no standard format for the plan, that the Voluntary Initiative's IPM plan templates can be used, and that the plan could cover approaches such as rotations, resistant varieties and flower-rich margins near cropped areas as habitat for the insects that eat pests.

Source: GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for integrated pest management, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

It is an agreement-level action rather than a parcel one, covering your agricultural land below the moorland line, and you need at least one land parcel linked to your SBI on the digital maps. The action page lists it as compatible with all SFI actions on the same area except the moorland assessment actions CMOR1 and MOR1.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 407, 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.

Check for an existing plan before commissioning a new one. A qualified adviser's plan from the last 12 months satisfies year one. If your agronomist did one as part of last season's service, the first year's work may already exist.

The BASIS number is half the evidence. The requirement is not just a plan but proof the person behind it was qualified: name and BASIS registration number. Get it onto the plan itself, because chasing it two years later is harder than writing it down on the day.

The review is a yearly event, not a yearly formality. The action's shape is three assessments, not one assessment photocopied twice. A plan that says the same thing three Octobers running, while the rotation, the chemistry and the resistance picture moved, is the sort of document that invites questions.

The plan does not do anything by itself. Nothing in this action requires you to implement what the plan says, and no other action checks. If the plan recommends companion cropping or dropping an insecticide, the scheme's money for actually doing those things lives in CIPM3 and CIPM4, and the plan is a sensible place to decide whether they suit you before entering them.

Dates matter at the start. The first assessment has a 12 month clock running from the action's start date. An adviser's winter diary fills up; booking the visit early beats explaining in month thirteen.

Keeping the evidence

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

GOV.UK asks you to keep the written IPM plan with its supporting assessment documentation, and evidence that the adviser is BASIS qualified, their name and registration number.

This is the easiest evidence job on the site, because the deliverable is itself the evidence. The practical suggestion is versioning: date each year's plan, keep all three rather than overwriting one file, and note the review date and what changed, so the annual reassessments are visible as three documents rather than one document with three dates typed on it.

Tilth stores documents against the farm with dates, so the three plans, the adviser's details and the review notes live where the rest of the compliance records already are.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether the conversation is worth more than the payment. The farms that get value from this action are the ones that treat the assessment as a chance to challenge their own programme, product by product, with someone qualified to argue back. Whether that describes your farm, and your adviser, is not something any page can tell you. What Tilth can do is hold the spray records the conversation starts from, because an honest IPM assessment begins with what was actually applied, and that history is exactly what the app keeps. Request an invite.