In order to claim Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), Scottish farms have to ensure they have at least two of the audits and plans that are part of the Whole Farm Plan (WFP) (more information available here). One of these audits is the WFP Biodiversity Audit.
You can easily create an accurate WFP Biodiversity Audit using the Baseline Habitat Assessment (BHA) that you have already made in Land App. This is a quick and intuitive way to meet your requirements for Nature Scot and is especially useful for you if you have mapped your BHA as part of a Land App Nature Reporting project.
Ensure your BHA is as accurate as possible - Before you create your WFP Biodiversity Audit, it is important to ensure your BHA is as accurate and detailed as possible.
Convert your BHA to the 'WFP Biodiversity Audit' - To create your WFP Biodiversity Audit, simply select the three dots to the right of your Biodiversity Habitat Assessment and select Duplicate.
You are then presented with a list of new plans you can create from your BHA. Scroll down and select the plan Whole Farm Plan Biodiversity Audit and then rename your plan something clearly recognisable before clicking the button ‘Create Plan’.
Now review habitats and assign habitats to any unassigned areas - As far as possible, we try to convert the UKHabitat Classifications you have assigned across your farm in the BHA to habitats from NatureScot’s Whole Farm Plan Habitat and Feature Key (for example, UK Habitats ‘Modified Grassland’ can be directly converted to NatureScot’s ‘Improved Grassland’).
The conversion is not always possible. In these cases, the field in your WFP Biodiversity Audit will be left unassigned. You will need to assign a use in your WFP Biodiversity Audit by clicking on the field and assigning the appropriate land use by clicking on Assign Use in the right hand panel.
Submit your new WFP Biodiversity Audit to Rural Payments and Services (RP&S) - Once you have created your WFP Biodiversity Audit and have confirmed all the assigned habitats, you are ready to submit your plan to RP&S. You can do this in a number of different ways:
Download your WFP Biodiversity Audit as a SHP. file (guidance here) and submit it to RP&S using the RP&S Map Viewer.
Create a Print of your WFP Biodiversity Audit with a clear legend identifying the assigned habitats and linear features. Email this to the RP&S Land Mapping Team (landmappingteam@gov.scot) and they will upload it to LPIS on your behalf. This guidance shows how.
You can find additional guidance on the WFP Biodiversity Audit process here - http://ruralpayments.org/topics/all-schemes/whole-farm-plan/