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The Government’s landscape recovery scheme initiative, driven by Defra, is at its heart a payment scheme to support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, land use change projects as set out in Defra’s Agricultural Transition Plan. A feature is to blend both public and private money to deliver outcomes – which means the schemes themselves need to attract private finance.
Defra requires each landscape recovery scheme to have a single legal entity (see more here) which will be the counterparty to the Implementation Agreement (the main contract for the public sector payments). Therefore it is critical to ensure that the contract structure for the scheme, and the single legal entity is robust.
What do we mean by private finance for landscape recovery?
Private finance generally encompasses a wide range of potential sources of money, from revenue from the sale of environmental credits and services, to equity investment and sources of debt. Bringing these potential sources of money together, alongside the Defra payments, will be part of the submission for any projects in the scheme.
How can you structure your landscape recovery scheme to be attractive for private finance?
As we mention above, private finance is a broad concept and therefore, unsurprisingly, there is a range of options available to make a scheme attractive to private funders. As part of the deliverables for the scheme, there will be a Blended Finance Plan which will include an assessment of the potential income and expenditure of the scheme and the sources of income and investment. Each scheme will have a different suite of considerations.
What will credit offtakers be looking for?
Looking at offtakers of credits generated by the scheme, the types of credit generated will be based on the ecology of the scheme itself. There are a range of potential offtakers and the key will be to ensure that there is demand for the supply of credits being generated, both in terms of type of credit, timing of delivery and geographical reach.
How can you attract investment capital?
For investment capital – this may come in two ways. Money where there is an expectation of a return (i.e. investors who put their money in as equity or debt into the single legal entity and are looking for return on that money) or donations (i.e. philanthropic contributions without that being repaid or receiving any return on that investment).
The considerations for each category will be different, but if you are seeking private investors/funders looking for a return on their money (either through debt or equity investment), you will need a robust financial model together with a clear structure which gives the single legal entity legal protections to ensure the benefit of outcomes derived from the land vest in the single legal entity itself, while also ensuring the single legal entity has the necessary rights to meet its obligations to Defra under the Implementation Agreement.
While conservation covenants will likely play a key part in providing this protection, they alone may not be enough to give private investors and funders all the comfort they are looking for.
What security may be available?
Where you have a debt funder, there may be a requirement to provide security for the lending in which case there will need to be a clear model to show the funder how its debt will be serviced, and how it can protect that with security. Many landscape recovery scheme models do not involve the single legal entity owning or leasing any land directly, so there is unlikely to be an ability to offer a charge over land. The security is likely to be offered over the cashflows and the contracts underpinning these.
Should you wish to discuss any of the issues raised in this article, please contact Alexandra Watson.
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