PA7 Species Management Plan: What It Pays For and How to Apply

There's a grant that pays you just to write down what deer are doing to your land, before you commit to any control work at all. PA7 covers exactly that: a species management plan, with deer counted as one of five eligible categories, at a set rate per plan.

What PA7 actually pays

£204.79 per species type your plan covers, up to a maximum of £1,023.95 if you're covering several in one go. Deer, American mink, edible dormouse, grey squirrel, and invasive non-native plants are the five eligible categories, and deer counts as one type regardless of whether native and non-native species are both present, not a separate payment per species of deer.

What has to be in the plan

The Forestry Commission provides a template for the deer version, and it asks for three things: an honest assessment of the impact deer are having on the land, the control and monitoring methods you intend to use, and a map showing where that control will happen. Nothing here commits you to actually carrying out the work yet. PA7 pays for the planning stage only.

Getting the sequencing right

You need a Capital Grants Plan agreement with the Rural Payments Agency in place before applying, and you can't already hold a management plan for the same species. Once the deer plan is drafted, it goes to the Forestry Commission's local operational delivery team for approval before any payment claim goes in.

Why the impact assessment is the part worth getting right

The plan lives or dies on its first section: an honest picture of what deer are actually doing on the site. That's precisely what a Deer Number Survey & Impact Assessment produces: which species are present, roughly how many, and the damage they're causing. That means the evidence behind a strong PA7 application doesn't have to come from a guess.

What PA7 actually leads to

An approved deer species management plan isn't just a box-ticking exercise. It's also the document required to apply for CWS1 ↗, the grant that pays annually for the control work described in the plan. Our Grants & Funding page has current rates for every scheme covered on the site.