Anne-Marie Trevelyan, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, has welcomed plans to cut bureaucracy for farmers, announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. Presently, farmers are subject to multiple inspections by central Government, local authority inspections and private sector audits many of whom gather similar types of information.
Mrs Trevelyan has heard from local farmers the level of frustration these multiple visits cause and raised the issue with the farming Minister last month.
The Chancellor’s statement announced the establishment of the Single Farm Inspection Taskforce which will aim to cut farm inspections by 20,000 by 2019-20.
Anne-Marie said: “I am pleased the Government is listening to concerns raised by farmers across Northumberland. Visits from multiple agencies which gather much of the same information is costly and time-consuming for our farmers. I have asked local farmers to send me case studies of how this problem has affected them, which I will now be able to feed in to this taskforce to enable them to develop an accurate picture of how this needless bureaucracy is burdening our farming community.”