HEF6Manage historic and archaeological features on grassland

What it actually is

A payment for grass doing the quiet work of preservation. The land is permanent grassland with a historic or archaeological feature on it, a barrow, a moat, ridge and furrow, a settlement earthwork, identified in an SFI Historic Environment Farm Environment Record, the HEFER, which you obtain before applying. The management asked for is continuity: a well-managed, intact grass sward or vegetation cover over the feature throughout the year, with minimal bare ground, scrub, bracken and pernicious weeds. The prohibitions do the protecting: no ploughing, cultivating, re-seeding, harrowing or rolling of the grassland, no supplementary feeding on or within about 6 metres of the feature, and no vehicle or stock access routes within about 6 metres of it, existing surfaced tracks excepted. GOV.UK's stated aim is the feature protected and the landscape character kept.

Source: GOV.UK, HEF6 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 8 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Permanent grassland over an earthwork is land that was never going to be ploughed, feature aside, in most cases: the feature is why it stayed grass through every reseeding fashion since. For that ground, the payment asks almost nothing new beyond the 6 metre disciplines, moving the ring feeder and the quad route away from the mound, and the scrub and bracken control the sward needed anyway. The farms for whom this action costs something are the ones who winter feed on the old ground or run tracks past the feature, and for them the 6 metre rules are the entire price. Set against the rate above, that is a sum most grass farms can do standing in the gateway.

Source: the payment rate at the top of this page; requirements from GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The judgements are Tilth's own reading rather than scheme guidance.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we would ordinarily fill with published evidence, and honesty about its absence is the better service here.

The aim of this action is archaeological, and the graded conservation evidence this site draws on does not assess archaeology. We have found no scored assessment of managing grassland over historic features, and it would be strange if we had: the mechanism is not ecological but physical, and it is not in serious dispute. Cultivation truncates buried features; an intact sward prevents cultivation and erosion; concentrated feeding and traffic poach the ground and churn what lies beneath. Those statements rest on the plain nature of soil and machinery rather than on trials, and the GOV.UK prohibitions map onto them one for one. Where the wildlife pages of this site weigh studies, this page can only note that the reasoning is sound and the evidence base, in the formal sense, is not a thing that exists for it.

Source: the aim and prohibitions, GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The reasoning is Tilth's own reading.

What you actually have to do

Get the SFI HEFER before applying; it identifies the features this action covers. Then keep a continuous, well-managed grass sward or vegetation cover over the feature all year, with minimal bare ground, scrub, bracken and pernicious weeds, managed in a way that can reasonably be expected to achieve the aim. Before removing any scrub or trees, get the consents that removal needs, felling licences and environmental impact assessment where they apply. Static: the same land throughout.

Source: GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

No ploughing, cultivating, re-seeding, harrowing or rolling of the grassland. No supplementary feeding on or within around 6 metres of the feature. No vehicle or stock access routes within around 6 metres of the feature, other than existing surfaced tracks.

Source: GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

Permanent grassland under PG01, carrying a feature your SFI HEFER identifies. Two rules sit quietly on the GOV.UK page. The moorland one is not the usual below-the-line rule: you cannot do this action on land parcels of more than 15 hectares above the moorland line, so a small parcel above the line can enter and a large one cannot. And SSSIs are eligible but you must give notice to Natural England and get SSSI consent before the Rural Payments Agency offers you an SFI26 agreement. The entry can be the total or part of the available area in a parcel, and the action is static.

Source: GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, 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 HEFER comes first, in time as well as importance. It is a prerequisite of applying, not a follow-up, and it takes as long as it takes. Request it early, and read it when it comes: it may know about features the farm has forgotten.

The 6 metres is invisible on the ground. Nobody painted a ring round the barrow. Pace it, note where it falls against gates and troughs, and move the feeding ring now rather than in a January argument with a contractor.

Bracken is the slow enemy. Its rhizomes do below ground what the plough does from above, which is presumably why it is named. On features with bracken established, the control is the real work of the action, and the consent question for any scrub that has become trees needs answering before the saw starts.

Rolling is on the banned list too. Chain harrowing and rolling the old pasture in spring is habit on many farms, and both are prohibited here. The habit, not the plough, is the likeliest accidental breach.

Molehills and rabbits are not your fault, but they are your signal. Minimal bare ground is the requirement, and burrowing makes bare ground. Where rabbits work an earthwork, the practical reading is that control protects both the sward you are paid for and the feature under it.

Keeping the evidence

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

Field operations with invoices, and photographs. The HEFER itself anchors the file. After that, seasonal photographs of the feature under its sward, plus a line in the diary for the bracken and scrub work, carry the whole action. The photographs double as something rarer: a dated record of an ancient thing in your keeping, which is its own kind of farm record.

Source: evidence requirements, GOV.UK, HEF6 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The suggestion is Tilth's own.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether the old ground's routines, the feeding spots, the quad lines, the winter tracks, already respect the 6 metres is known only to the person who drives them. Draw the feature on the map, ring it, and the answer is visible before the application is typed. Tilth's map is built for exactly that kind of drawing. Request an invite.