Options for Buffer Strips and Field Margins
Buffer strips have a wide range of potential benefits, such as: creating new habitat for small mammals, invertebrates and birds; protecting habitats from sprays, fertiliser and cultivation; protecting archaeological or historic features from damage by mechanical operations; stabilising banks, protecting water courses and reducing diffuse pollution.
Where to locate buffer strips
Choose the width that is most suitable for you and your machinery and use these options alongside or adjoining environmental features (e.g. ponds, ditches, riverbanks, hedges, stone walls). Buffer strips offer particular benefit to wildlife if placed adjacent to watercourses, hedgerows, stone walls and remnant boundary treelines. Generally speaking, the wider the buffer strip, the greater the protection and wildlife habitat that will be provided.
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Buffer strip options in ELS must not overlap with:
- The Single Payment Scheme cross compliance requirement not to cultivate land within 2 m of the centre of a hedgerow or watercourse (and within 1 m of the top of the bank of a watercourse).
- Any other buffer strips or uncultivated strips required under other ELS options, such as ELS options for field boundaries, trees and woodland.
- Public Rights of Way (e.g. footpaths or bridleways) along field edges.
You must start your ELS buffer strip options where your other uncultivated land ends (i.e. 2 m from the centre of a hedge or ditch, and at least 1 m from the top of a ditch bank).
Buffer strip options EE1, EE2 and EE3 must not run alongside any 6 - 10 m set-aside strips established under your Single Payment Scheme entitlement. This rule does not apply to set-aside strips wider than 10 m, but the ELS buffer strips must be located between the set-aside strip and the environmental feature being buffered.
You may establish 2 or 4 m ELS buffer strip options (EE1 and EE2) alongside 2 m Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS) grass margins, but you must not establish any ELS buffer strip options alongside 6 m CSS grass margins.
If you are locating your ELS buffer strip next to a hedge which extends further than 2 m from the centre line, it is acceptable for part of your ELS buffer strip to be covered by hedge, provided the land would otherwise be eligible as a buffer strip.
Buffer strips that have already been established are eligible if their management is not being paid for under another scheme, and they are not under permanent set-aside. However, a buffer strip must be located on land which could, in practice, be cultivated (e.g. very steeply banked strips alongside boundaries are not eligible).
Remember: You should not apply manures within 10 m of a watercourse (as advised in the Water Code, Defra publications, PB 0587) and, when spraying pesticides adjacent to buffer strips, you must still keep to the pesticide regulations in order to control drift.
How to record buffer strip measurements
On your field data sheet (annex 2 of your application form), you must enter the amount of each buffer strip option as an area measurement in hectares for each field. This will give you a figure which you will need to complete your Single Payment Scheme (SPS) return (see section 4.1.3). It will also help you to work out the remaining field area available for other uses e.g. cropping, other ELS options or set-aside.
For each buffer strip measure the length of the option in metres, and convert this to hectares (to the nearest 0.01 ha (100 m2)). See section 2.3.4, for a worked example of the conversion to hectares.
You may find it helpful to use the worksheet provided at appendix 3 to help you to calculate the area of buffer strip options in each field.
EE1 and EE2 2 m and 4 m buffer strips on cultivated land
- For this option you must:
- Establish or maintain a grassy strip during the first 12 months of your agreement - ideally by natural regeneration. Remove any compaction in the topsoil if you need to prepare a seed bed. Regular cutting in the first 12 months may be needed to control annual weeds and encourage grasses to tiller.
- These strips must not receive any fertilisers or manure.
- Apply herbicides only to spot treat or weed wipe for the control of injurious weeds (i.e. creeping or spear thistle, curled or broadleaved dock, or common ragwort), or invasive alien species (e.g. Himalayan balsam, rhododendron or Japanese knotweed).
- After the first 12 months of your agreement, cut buffer strips only to control woody growth, and no more than one year in five (where next to woodland, one year in ten).
- Do not use buffer strips for regular access, turning or storage.
EE1, 2 m buffer strips on cultivated land: 300 points per ha
EE2, 4 m buffer strips on cultivated land: 400 points per ha
EE3 6 m buffer strips on cultivated land
Follow the management for EE1/EE2, and in addition:
- After the first 12 months of your agreement, cut the 3 m next to the crop edge annually after mid July. Only cut the other 3 m to control woody growth, and no more than one year in five (where next to woodland, one year in ten).
If you wish, you may establish all or part of the margin by sowing a mix of fine-leaved grasses and flowers (e.g. knapweed, bird's-foot-trefoil, selfheal, oxeye daisy, yarrow). If you decide to do this, it is recommended that you cut each year the following August or September and, if excess vegetation threatens to suppress the flowers, cut again the following March or April. This will maintain the flowers in this sward, or others resulting from natural regeneration. You may remove cuttings, which will further benefit flowers.
EE3, 6 m buffer strips on cultivated land: 400 points per ha
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EE4/5/6 2 m, 4 m and 6 m buffer strips on intensive grassland
These options are available on improved grassland receiving more than 100 kg/ha of inorganic nitrogen fertiliser per year (refer to table at appendix 2). It is not a requirement to fence these buffer strips.
For this option you must:
- On fields which will be mown, leave an uncut 2 m/4 m/6 m buffer strip around mown grass fields; graze along with the aftermath, following the final cut.
- Do not poach or overgraze the buffer strip.
- The strips should not receive any fertilisers or manure.
- Herbicides may only be applied to spot treat or weed wipe for the control of injurious weeds (i.e. creeping or spear thistle, curled or broadleaved dock, or common ragwort), or invasive alien species (e.g. Himalayan balsam, rhododendron or Japanese knotweed).
- Cut buffer strips only to control woody growth, and no more than one year in five (where next to woodland, one year in ten).
- Do not use buffer strips for regular access, turning or storage.
EE4, 2 m buffer strips on intensive grassland: 300 points per ha
EE5, 4 m buffer strips on intensive grassland: 400 points per ha
EE6, 6 m buffer strips on intensive grassland: 400 points per ha
EE7/EE8 Buffering in-field ponds in improved permanent grassland and arable land
To maintain their value to wildlife, the water quality of ponds needs to be protected. In areas of improved grassland management and on arable land, the creation of un-fertilised grass buffers around in-field ponds will help protect them from nutrient leaching and run-off and provide additional habitat for pond wildlife. They will be less effective where field drains discharge directly into the pond. The buffer areas may be designed to link two nearby ponds or to link ponds to copses or other boundary features. This option is only available on grassland which is currently receiving over 50 kg/N per ha (EE7), or on arable land (EE8).
For this option you must:
- Patch size must be no more than 0.5 ha, although several patches may be linked where there are several ponds in a field.
- Buffer areas must extend at least 10 m from the edge of, and around, each pond.
- You may allow some scrub to develop, but this must be around less than half of the pond margin.
- Do not apply fertiliser or manure.
- Establish buffer areas by natural regeneration or by sowing. Regular cutting in the first 12 months may be needed to control annual weeds and encourage grass to tiller.
- After establishment, cut no more than one year in five to allow the development of tussocky grass and low scrub. Do not allow scrub to develop on archaeological sites.
- Apply herbicides only to spot treat or weed-wipe for the control of injurious grass weeds (i.e. creeping or spear thistle, curled or broadleaved dock, or common ragwort), or invasive alien species (e.g. Himalayan balsam, rhododendron or Japanese knotweed). If the weed burden becomes unmanageable, you may surface seed these patches with a tussocky grass mix.
- Where the field is grazed, limit livestock access so that less than half of the pond edge is poached.
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EE7, Buffering in-field ponds in permanent improved grassland: 400 points per ha
EE8, Buffering in-field ponds in arable land: 400 points per ha