Rural Payments and Services

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The aim of this item is to create wet areas by raising water levels in the spring and early summer, or longer.

These wet areas benefit a wide variety of wildlife, including invertebrates, plants and birds, and provide valuable feeding for waders such as lapwing, curlew, snipe and redshank.

Damming open ditches with soil and introducing a culvert pipe through the soil dam which can be raised or lowered to act as a sluice will allow water level upstream of the dam to be managed in order to create seasonally wet areas.

The sluice can be opened once chicks have fledged which will allow the ground to dry sufficiently to allow management such as mowing, grazing or topping.

Any land, with the exception of heather moorland, is eligible for this item.

You should not include areas of land covering rocks, scree, water, dense bracken etc. We will check this using the same approach we use to check land for the Basic Payment Scheme.

Assessing your land eligibility

You must identify on a map the locations of all proposed new pipe sluices.

• you must obtain Scottish Environment Protection Agency approval for your proposed pipe sluice(s)

For clarification, authorisation is only required if a sluice is on a naturally occurring water course (including surface waters such as ditches which were once natural but have since been straightened or canalised) and must be provided either alongside your application or if this is not possible, to your case officer before 31 August in the year of application.

The capital item will be removed if approval is not submitted in time.

• you must block the ditch using soil and construct a pipe sluice with either flexible pipe which can be raised and tied up, or rigid pipe with a right-angled end which can be rotated
• the pipe sluice must be managed in order to hold water in the desired wetland area or scrape from March until the end of May, or longer
• you must maintain a diary

You can claim £201.67 per sluice.

You can choose one of the following management options to support the creation of wetlands:

• Management of Buffer Areas for Fens and Lowland Raised Bogs
• Wetland Management
• Wader Grazed Grassland
• Wader and Wildlife Mown Grassland

The inspectors will check:

• the location and extent of the work
• you have blocked the ditch using soil and construct a pipe sluice with either flexible pipe which can be raised and tied up, or rigid pipe with a right-angled end which can be rotated
• the pipe sluice has been constructed in order to hold water in the desired wetland area or scrape from March until the end of May, or longer
• you have maintained a diary

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