working paperProposals specifically aimed at delivering environmental benefits are often exempt from
assessment, despite evidence that they can be poorly thought-through and sometimes counterproductive.
This is doubly true of agri-environmental schemes where local farm-scale actions
are expected to generate large-area cumulative effects on soil and water quality, biodiversity
or landscape. There is evidence that the benefits of such schemes have often been assumed
rather than planned for, thus necessitating ex-post assessment to justify their continuance