Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA): The Peatland Challenge Fund

Overview

Priorities

The Environmental Impact Priorities for funding under this Peatland Challenge Fund Competition are:

• Nature Recovery; Building ecological and climate resilience in Peatland:
• Developing and/or delivering peatland restoration plans to maintain and increase the area of peatlands in favourable condition. This includes restoration of erosion impacts, reactivation of drained peatlands, forest to bog restoration, control of alien invasives, and projects that address grazing pressure.
• Development of environmental surveying, monitoring and mapping programmes for biodiversity, archaeology, climate and water impacts of the peatland restoration works. This includes the development of pilots to demonstrate success of existing restoration proposals.
• Connecting People with Nature; Peatlands:
• Provision or improvement of resources and capacity building activities to deliver environmental learning and community engagement projects for peatlands. This includes an arts-based approach to engagement.
• Improving educational opportunities relating to peatlands, including for under-represented groups.
• Volunteering, including the establishment of new local groups or greater public involvement within their organisation.
• Strategic development of citizen science for peatland conservation and improvement where this will produce reliable long term surveillance indices/data.

Bodies can only submit one application as a Lead Applicant. Applicants can also receive funding as a partner helping to deliver specific outcomes identified in another organisation’s application. Where it is proposed that your organisation may also receive Environment Fund funding from another organisation that is applying as a Lead Applicant, this must be indicated in both your application and the relevant other application.

If proposals for restoration projects require a development plan, these must be completed by September 2025. Indicative costs must be provided for implementation of plans in this application for action within the timeframe of the Peatland Challenge Fund.

Funding

For the Peatland Challenge Fund 2024-27 Competition this fund will be for 100% of project costs. DAERA will not provide funding of less than £50,000 (so the minimum total cost of a project is £50,000). There is no maximum total cost of a project, although we expect competition for funding to be strong and will be considering Value for Money in their assessment of applications.

You can apply for support towards all of the elements of your project that will deliver the proposed environmental priorities based on the principle of full cost recovery.
Full cost recovery means securing funding for all the costs involved in running a project. This means that you can request funding for direct project costs and for a proportionate share of your organisation's overheads.

Payment of grant will be in arrears unless there are exceptional circumstances requiring a degree of payment upfront.

Applications may be refused or offered a lower level of funding if there is insufficient budget or there are concerns about value for money or risks in delivering the outputs.