TENANT farmers in Cumbria could be offered access to The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme organised by The Prince’s Countryside Fund.

The National Trust has entered into an agreement with the fund to run the programme for up to 60 of its farm tenants in four areas of the country.

While the exact details are still to be worked out, they are likely to be run in the north west, north Wales, the Midlands and the south west.

Tenants Farmers Association Chief Executive, George Dunn, said: “We have been working hard behind the scenes with both the National Trust and the fund to bring this to fruition, and we are delighted that an agreement has been reached to pilot this initiative in four areas starting this autumn.

“ While these areas focus predominantly on upland areas, the expectation is that, subject to the success of the pilot, further areas and farm types will be looked at.”

The programme offers free business skills training to family farms across the UK. Participants take part in a series of seven workshops which focus on different business skills to maximise profitability and resilience. Topics include business planning, understanding accounts and budgeting, managing your farmed environment, and exploring new opportunities.

Alongside this, every farm receives one-to-one on farm support to take part in a Business Health Check Tool to look at their strengths and weaknesses and benchmark costs against similar farms.

“Feedback from those who have engaged with the programme to date has been excellent. I very much hope that National Trust tenants will take advantage of this initiative when it is launched in the summer.

“Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis,” said Mr Dunn.