It was relaunched for the Rural Development Programme England (RDPE) 2014-2020 with £3.1bn of government subsidy for agriculture and forestry, replacing the previous Environmental Stewardship scheme.
Natural England will broadly lead on the set up and delivery of transactional services for Countryside Stewardship for the first year of the new scheme.
In its first guise introduced as a five-year pilot project by the Countryside Commission in 1991, the scheme aimed to improve the environmental value of farmland throughout England.
The administration of the scheme was taken over by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) on 1 April 1996, and the scheme expanded to include new landscapes and features, including whole farm plans for restoring and recreating traditional walls and ditches, wildlife corridors in arable areas using uncropped margins in arable fields (with management to benefit associated wild flowers and birds), traditional buildings, and old meadows and pastures (important for maintaining and increasing biodiversity).
From 2014 to 2020 Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) was originally adopted by the European Commission on 13 February 2015.