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Webinar - Building a Countryside Stewardship Application with Land App
Webinar - Building a Countryside Stewardship Application with Land App
Simla Rees-Moorlah avatar
Written by Simla Rees-Moorlah
Updated over a week ago

Summary

  • The webinar is about building a Countryside Stewardship Application with Land App.

  • Stewardship planning and provides tools for mapping and visualizing land features.

  • Collaborate with clients or advisors by sharing access to the maps.

  • RPA-compliant maps for application submission.

Transcript

Today's webinar, we'll be talking through how to build a Countryside Stewardship application with the Land App. I'm Dan, the Innovations and Partnerships lead here at Land App, and today I really want to just spend about an hour demonstrating the key functions that will be useful for you if you're building a Countryside Stewardship application either for this year or potentially into the future.

I'm going to start off once I just finished the introduction just touching on a couple of key rules for Countryside Stewardship when you're using the Land App. I'm assuming that most people on this call are at least familiar with what the Land App is; however, I will be going over some basic principles as well.

Then I'm going to spend a majority of the time doing a live demo of how you can draft an application. This starts from importing your payment agency data using the Countryside Stewardship template, viewing and editing your plans using our data layers, and then downloading the data ready for application. So, that's both the annex form template through the Countryside Stewardship download, but also how to print off RPA compliant maps as part of your supporting evidence.

We've also recently updated our photo evidencing functionality in line with our mobile app that's just been released, so I'm just going to explain a bit more about that as well. There will then be time for Q&A at the end, so please do put your questions into the Q&A function, and we have, I think, enabled the upvoting system. So, if there's a particular question that you really want answering, please do upload it as it comes through.

Today, I'm going to try and show best practice, so I will be going as slow as I can, but as there's a lot to cover, there might be times when I go quite quickly, and I apologize for that. But if you do need to recap on anything, you can either look at this webinar on our YouTube channel, or there's a load of other webinars on the YouTube channel, particularly the introductory training for those new and fresh to the Land App. I'd recommend going to watch.

So the key rules when mapping a Countryside Stewardship application on the Land App - these are five rules that I've pulled out after lots of experience of people, including doing some applications myself, that you should be aware of to make sure that you're getting the most out of the platform.

Rule number one is always use the RPA land covers to build your plan, and this is accessible through an SBI number download (Single Business Identifier). The reason for this is the field parcels themselves are structured by the land cover type, which allows you to quite easily cross-reference eligibility. So, you might have a whole field parcel that's got a bit of woodland to the side or maybe an ineligible feature; land covers will show that your land parcels won't. I'll now explain a bit more about that during the demo.

The second one, particularly important if you're an advisor or you're doing multiple applications in one year, is to please just name your maps consistently rather than just calling them all Countryside Stewardship 2023. Use a consistent structure; I recommend, for example, CSS_ Farm name_surname. This will keep the data nice and tidy.

Rule number three is to ensure that your Capital items are being allocated to the correct fields. This is one of the biggest errors we see. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it can get quite messy, and I'm just going to show you how to eliminate any risk of that error being generated. Basically, always select the field parcel that you want that Capital item to be allocated to before drawing it. So, you don't want to have tree planting assigned to one field parcel that actually the trees are across the whole farm, and I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.

Rule number four is just try and avoid overlapping polygons when you can using the subtract function. What I mean by that is if you've got two features, just make sure they're not overlapping. They are two-dimensional; however, there are some exceptions, some supplementary payments that you can get through Countryside Stewardship where the options can be co-located, and I'll demonstrate how to handle that as well if relevant to that first point I made.

And finally, please cross-reference the land use code with the option eligibility. So, if you are putting down an arable option, please ensure that you're putting it in an arable field. If the land use type is incorrect, please use an RLE1 form and officially log that change with the Rural Payment Agency as soon as you can. Even if you think it's arable and they think it's grasslands, you need to make sure you're updating it formally through the RLE1 process.

Just a note before I move on to the demo, the mobile app was released earlier this year specifically to help people with their evidencing for Countryside Stewardship. So, it's a good time to speak about this. It is only available to our subscribers, so you need to be on the monthly or annual subscription with us to have access to it. However, what it allows you to do is quickly gather evidence and photos before the stewardship scheme has begun, particularly for Capital items. Also, during the process of delivering those Capital items, you can use it to evidence the during and after photos.

If you're an advisor handling multiple applications, one thing that we're seeing more and more people do is actually get the professional subscription and therefore the mobile app for their clients, just for a month or two, and asking the clients to go and do the photo evidencing through the mobile app. This saves you having to walk over 10 or 15 different farms, and they can just go around in the morning on a quad bike. That's another option, and I'm happy to provide further information if you need it.

Okay, I'm going to move across to the demo now, and just for the first couple of moments, I'll explain what the Land App is for anyone who's new. The Land App is a mapping platform based at thelandapp.com, so we're not a desktop application. You don't need to download anything onto your computer. You can access it through any web browser. I'll be using Google Chrome during the demo, as we do feel it's optimized for Google Chrome. However, it does work on Microsoft Edge, Safari, etc.

On our website, you can create a free account by hitting the "Join for Free" button or the "Sign Up" button. In a moment, I'm going to log in, but let me point out a couple of sections of the website that might be of interest. We've got different pages for the different customer groups. "Farmers" is the particular focus for the moment, and "Land Agency." We also have community pages where we host a lot of blogs, thought leadership pieces, etc., and we have the links to our events. All of you have gotten here either through our marketing emails or through the website, but do keep an eye on this page if you want to see which webinars are coming up next. Our pricing and about pages include further information about those specifics, but do take a look at the Community page in particular if you find yourself with five minutes.

Once you've signed up and followed the process (I'll assume you will have, or at least you can do that after the session), you can then log in. Once you've logged into the Land App, you're initially met with what we call the Maps home page. This is where all of your maps that you've created sit. Each one of these thumbnails represents a different farm or holding. If you're on the professional subscription, you can use our team tags and start filtering data based on particular use cases and tags that you may have used. There's guidance on that, particularly if you're working for an agency that has multiple farms or clients. The professional subscription allows you and your team to quite tidily look after all the different data points.

If you've also got any maps that you've been invited to, for example, if people have sent you a request or maybe you're a farmer and one of your agents has invited you to their map, you'll find that within the "Shared with Me" button. So, if you can't see it in your organization's maps or your maps, do just click the "Shared with Me" button, and that loads up all the maps that have been shared with you outside of your organization. This is a common thing people message us about, saying they can't find the maps, but check "Shared with Me" before panicking too much.

To start the demo, I'm going to create a new map by hitting the "New" button at the top of the screen (it might be hidden behind my head depending on your camera's perspective). Clicking "New" allows you to create a new map, which I'll name "CSS Webinar." I'll also give it a team tag, "Demo Maps," so my team knows it's just a demo. I'll create an empty map.

Once you've created the map, you'll be on an interactive base map over Birmingham, and by default, the base map is OpenStreetMap. However, you can change the base map to several different options. For example, "Bing Imagery" is one of our free base maps that lets you view the whole country using satellite Earth observation data. There are other base maps available, and we also host Ordnance Survey data as we're an Ordnance Survey partner. If you're on the free products, you'll need to top up credits to use Ordnance Survey data, but professional subscribers can either keep using the credit system or use their Ordnance Survey Data Hub account to access up to a thousand pounds of free data per month. If you need more information or to check your eligibility, let us know, and we can provide further details.

All of these base maps are interactive, so you can scroll around by clicking and dragging. Recently, we've also released the LiDAR base map from the Environment Agency, but there's currently a bug with it, so it might not load this morning. However, it should be fixed this afternoon. Just a note, the LiDAR base map is only available for professional subscribers. For the demo today, I'll mostly use Ordnance Survey Light as it gives a grey background and makes the colours stand out a bit. However, I might also switch to Bing Imagery.

To create your application or start building a Countryside Stewardship application, you need to get the data from the Rural Payment Agency onto your map. To do that, you can click the "New" button at the top left and then select "Import Data." There are four different ways to get data in: you can pick from Land Registry, import data from external GIS software or CAD software, or create from an existing plan. For this demo and for every Countryside Stewardship application, rule number one is to please import from the Rural Payment Agency using a Single Business Identifier (SBI) number.

When you paste the SBI number into the appropriate field, the Land App will automatically check whether the SBI number is eligible. As long as it stays green, you know you have a correct SBI number. The data sets available from the RPA are land covers, land parcels, and hedgerows. I would recommend always using your land covers and probably bringing down the hedgerow data as well. For now, I won't bring down the land parcels, as it keeps the map cleaner.

Next, the Land App will ask you to choose which template you'd like to use to create your plan. The Land App restricts users to choose a template before they allow mapping, as it ensures your data is clean and the reason for using the map remains consistent.

So, what I'm actually going to do, and I recommend that you all do this first, is always bring your data into the Basic Payment Scheme template first and then create a Countryside Stewardship template on top. The reason for that is it will be really obvious when you're doing your stewardship plan what the existing land use is according to the Rural Payment Agency. If you just go straight into Countryside Stewardship, you're always working on a red boundary rather than a coloured map. I'm going to actually bring in the Basic Payment Scheme very quickly and just call this "BPS Land Cover."

That sends a request to the RPA and downloads my farm's land use data, and it colours in the different land use types as well. Now I can see that I have a green parcel for grassland, a darker green for Woodland, and all the arable land has a red line around it. I can quickly add an arable code or a permanent crop to an individual polygon, or if I've got lots of polygons, I can right-click and select "Feature Type" and assign them all to a colour. This will now serve as a reference layer for when I'm building my stewardship plan. I can quickly see which fields the RPA thinks are grassland, which ones are woodland, and which ones are arable by my green, dark green, and yellow colours.

The first thing to say is that when you've got this data downloaded, all of the data is stored at the field parcel level. Each of my polygons has got a nine-digit field ID, and that is predefined by the Rural Payment Agency. When you're submitting a stewardship application, we want all that data to remain tidy as you can see on the left-hand side with my BPS map, which is my land cover map. I've also got where the RPA thinks existing hedgerows are as well through my hedge control. The reason that's important to have as a reference layer is if you're putting in any Capital items relevant to your hedgerows, you might put them in the Hedgerow Management option or coppicing, for example, of hedgerows. You need to ensure that the length of hedgerow that you're declaring is either on their existing system or is going to show on your firm app, which I'll have time to show in a moment. But you just need the RPA to know that there's an existing hedgerow there.

So, I've got my land cover map in terms of the land use for the fields and my hedgerows. What I'm now going to do is on top of that land cover map, I'm going to generate my first Countryside Stewardship template. I'm going to use the exact same stepper as I just did before, which is "Use Template." I'm now going to choose the Countryside Stewardship template, but this time I'm going to create it from an existing plan because I've already downloaded my land cover data. I'm going to call this layer "CSS" for Countryside Stewardship. Probably I'll call it "Farm Name" like this.

So now, I've got three layers. I've got two reference layers that I'm going to keep toggling on and off just to remind myself which fields are available, which ones are grassland, and obviously which ones are woodland. Then, I've got a blank stewardship template that will allow me to start allocating stewardship options at the field parcel level. Let's get started.

The first thing to know is that you can edit these shapes. I can edit these polygons either at the whole field level, or I can break them down into subsequent components to then give a stewardship code. For example, this is an existing arable field. I've not done a farm walk, so everything I'm doing today is just hypothetical rather than me actually advising this particular farm and what options they should do. But hypothetically, I'm going to use an arable version option on that entire field. I can do that by clicking on the field, then clicking "Change," searching for the code I was looking for (arable version), selecting it, and now that field is highlighted or coloured with the official Rural Payment Agency styling for this code, SW7 - Arable Version, Low Input Grassland.

As you change the shape, a few things happen. The styling changes, but also quite a few metadata points on the right-hand side change while you're updating that scheme. Just to talk through those, I've obviously got the stewardship code, which is ABA, and the code name, which is "Flower Rich Margins."

I've also got the associated payment rate, so how much am I going to get paid based on the 2023 payment rates per hectare, and then the value of that, which is the payment rate times the hectarage. All of those data points are dynamic based on what stewardship option you assign. So, if I was to, for example, put this back to SW7, you'll see that both the payment rate per hectare and therefore the subsequent value should update. So, when I change from ABA to SW7, the payment rate has changed, and the value is, therefore, changed, but the hectarage hasn't because I haven't changed the shape or size of the field. This is something that Land App is going to be automatically doing for me throughout the entire demonstration.

Just to make it slightly tidier, I'm going to leave the code on for now and hectarage. Now, in reality, it's unlikely that you're going to want to put the whole field in. Maybe there are areas that you need to minus off the edge to ensure you're not overclaiming, or you might want to put in some buffer strips. I'm going to show you a couple of key drawing tools on this field and how I can improve or start to fine-tune the stewardship options that fit within this field.

One thing that you can do is cut off or split a field based on a line of your choosing. In this particular field, for example, I might want to put in a flower margin on the northern edge. That flower plot can either be defined by a split. So, I can right-click on the field, split it by clicking once, moving my mouse through the other side, and double-clicking. Now, SW7 has been split into two components, which has affected the hectarage. The total hectarage has now been split, but the metadata (e.g., the field number and description) has remained constant for both of those areas since these are now independent features. I can assign that northern block to my wildflowers, which, actually, I think is just "Flower Rich," isn't it? Flower Rich margins, for example. I've, therefore, assigned that top block (AB8) with a certain hectarage as well.

So, just to recap on that point, right-click on the shape, choose split, and then you can split the field however you wish, and then you've got components that you can add different options to as well. Now, I've taken that 100-hectare field and split it into three components. However, in that process, because I've used the split tool, the sum of those three parts always equals the entire sum of that field parcel. If you want to double-check that the field numbers are correctly allocated, you can either turn on the labels, hold shift, select those fields, and turn on the field ID, for example. That way, I can manually see that all of these are still part of 2286. So, I know I've mapped that field correctly. Or, if you click on the little folder icon on the left-hand side, the field parcel that you've selected is highlighted orange, and there you can see what features make up my field parcel. Within this field parcel, I've actually got an area, and this is another reason why using land covers rather than land parcels is a good idea. I haven't actually noticed, but I've got a track that was undescribed and is, therefore, not being allocated to a stewardship option. I can see that I've got that ease of cross-referencing additional areas within my field parcel that aren't eligible for that stewardship option. If you had used the land parcels and assigned it all to SW7, I would have risked adding an additional 0.14 hectares of ineligible land to a stewardship option. So, just to reiterate, use land covers for stewardship plans, not land parcels.

Now, that's me just splitting off polygons. Now, you might actually want, instead of just doing plots or straight-line splits, to draw margins that are slightly more natural, maybe following the curve of a field boundary or following a hedge line. I'm going to draw a margin that follows down this southerly edge of the field. To do that, I first select the parcel, telling the Land App which field I'm focusing on. Then, I hit "Draw" and "Line." By default, when you click once, the Land App is automatically trying to magnetize or snap to the line of that field boundary. You can see, I haven't clicked again; it's just following it all the way around. I can go all the way around to this edge, then double-click to finish and hit "Finish." What I've done is firstly just drawn a line defining where I want my margin to go. I can then add a buffer to that line to define the width of that particular margin I'm wanting to create. I've chosen "Side One," which is the left-hand side on the direction I drew. I can then dictate the width, so I could put a 12-meter margin. I'm then asked if I want to round the corners, which I can, and apologies that the white and blue are quite hard to see, but you can hopefully see that there's a change in the angle of this corner. Then, you can either choose to subtract or not. As I mentioned, if you don't subtract, you're going to have overlap. So, if I don't subtract, just to show you and hit OK, the area of this field has remained 11.18, so even if I assign this to an AB9, for example, a winter bird strip down the side, I'm actually double counting because there's overlap. What you need to remember to do is make those two-dimensional by using the subtract tool. So, click on the AB9, always subtract the one you want to keep, hit the buffer and subtract, and if you watch, when I hit OK, 11.18 will be reduced by 0.82. So, we hit OK, and that number is now 10.36. I've hole-punched, so to speak, the AB9 through the SW7.

That's just reiterating the importance of land covers and also reiterating the importance of just making sure you've got no overlapping polygons and how to add those other features that you might want to add or what I call "floating features." Rather than a buffer that follows an edge of the field parcel, you may want to add a feature in the middle of the arable field. An obvious one might be a lapwing or curly plot. To do that, you click on the polygon first, telling the Land App which field parcel you want the shape to sit in. Then, hit "Draw" and choose from our different shapes to draw that lapwing plot. For a lapwing plot I would probably use the rectangle because you want it to be square, and then you just basically click once, click twice, and finish drawing your polygon. For a lapwing plot, there's a minimum hectarage of 0.25, and you can change the width in the right-hand panel to get an exact area if you're aiming for a particular hectarage. So, there we are, I've got an exact lot of 0.25 because I've got 50 by 50 meters. Again, I can assign that the lapwing code, but I do need to remember to subtract it because I can't co-load it. I go to Action > Buffer, hit Subtract, and OK.

So now, I've got a field with lots of different options, and obviously, this is just more of an example than something I'd actually recommend that Tim does at his family farm. The other thing to show you is, as you're drawing these options, there's a hyperlink on the right-hand side that's dynamic and will always be available to you. It gives you direct access to the guidance for that particular option. Earlier, when I was questioning what the minimum hectare is for a lapwing plot, I can actually click on this hyperlink, and that takes me directly to the DEFRA website where there's guidance on the lapwing plot. I can then look in here both in terms of the payment rate and also eligibility. There's a minimum plot size of five hectares. So, just make sure, at a high level, you're checking the eligibility of this in particular locations and where you are not allowed to put this as well. For example, you cannot locate this within 100 meters of woodlands. But at the moment, Land App isn't going to flag up if you're within 100 meters of an existing woodland. Anyway, you're the expert, or the advisor that you're working with is the expert. Land App isn't going to make that decision for you; we're just providing you with a tool to meet those eligibility requirements.

That's how you draw floating options and a buffer, and it's also just worth saying that on this spare field, if you want to just draw a complete buffer, you can do that as well in the buffering tool by just going in, choosing side two, dictating the width of that buffer, and then hitting Subtract. Now, what I've got is a 12-meter buffer that I can assign a code to, if I type in "12B," and then you can assign that to a field and an option if you want.

So, there are whole field buffers, partial buffers, floating options, and drawing lines, which I'll come on to when we're looking at capital options. But hopefully, that's covered all of the main bases in terms of just the basic drawing tools for drawing a feature. One quick trick I want to quickly show you because we've seen a couple of clients use this, especially if you're doing a lot of stewardships this year, is especially in arable fields, stewardship options work really well if you make the stewardship kind of get rid of tricky corners on fields. It's almost like if we can encourage most arable fields to become rectangles, we can encourage more efficient farming because they're going in straight lines and they're not then trying to get around these tricky edges. In a hypothetical situation, if this is arable, what you can do (I've seen a couple of customers use this, I think Calgary Estate showed me this a couple of six months ago) is, if I click on this parcel, then go Draw and Draw a Rectangle, I can draw a rectangle from say here to here and go like this. I can then play around with these numbers to make them exactly a multiple of my boom. So, say I've got a 30-meter boom, 300 goes into 30 meters. I can play with the height and rotate it as well and get it to work however I want and move it around with our drawing features. Once I'm happy with that (obviously, it may be more efficient to go the other way, but the principle is there), once I'm happy with that, I can then subtract that square, and that can be my arable area that I will leave as arable. All of the outside of the field, I can start playing around with a series of options stewardship options and just coming up with a plan based on that rectangularization of the arable area. Just an idea for you to put out there if of interest. Again, because I clicked on the field before I drew my shape, that rectangle is sat within the field parcel number. That's correct.

I've been doing a lot of demoing, and just one feature that I want to make sure you're aware of is we do allow undo. So, if you've done anything that you regret or you want to change or you've made a mistake, first thing is please don't panic, just use the undo button. What that allows you to do is it allows you to backpedal on what you last did. So, you can see the polygon is moving and rotating, and then the polygon is gone. That just gives you the flexibility to undo things you've done. However, if you leave the map, the undo/redo resets. So, why I'm wanting to show you that is please, if you think you've done something wrong or you want to redo anything, the worst thing you can do is close the web page or refresh. Just please, hold that map there and use the undo button rather than going out and coming back in again.

So, that's drawing Revenue options. What I wanted to quickly show you is that we have lots of data layers available in our data layer library on the right-hand side. You might encounter eligibility problems, especially if you're in areas like AONB or SSSI. So, remember to check the eligibility requirements and toggle on the layers relevant to the particular option you are considering. Priority habitats are also important, especially if you're aiming for higher tier options, although it might be mostly mid-tier applications today. Turning on the priority habitat layer can help you identify eligible options based on the designation by Natural England.

Recently, we introduced a new set of data, the UK CEH's e-planner data, as part of our partnership with Sainsbury's. This data is accessible for free to everyone in England with an SBI number who is applying for Countryside Stewardship. To access it, click on the "New" button, then select "Buy Data," and you'll find two free workflows that I recommend you use for Countryside Stewardship. These workflows can help you understand where you might want to focus on creating certain margins, among other things. The specific one I want to show you is the e-planner by UK CEH.

If you click on that button, all you need to do is firstly define your area of interest. You can do this by either choosing a plan, like your stewardship plan, for example, that defines your area of interest. Give it a name, for example, and I would recommend leaving the default settings as they are to keep it clean to the edge. Then, you just need to paste your SBI number. When you hit "Buy Now," the land app will quickly go and request that data from CEH. It will serve you five different opportunity layers where CEH's high-level recommendations for certain options will go.

The five layers include "Pollinators," "Water Resource Protection," "Woodland Planting," "Wet Grassland," and "Bird Seed Mix." These layers represent priority areas for specific interventions. For example, "Pollinators" are where the soil is lighter, with south-facing slopes and good drainage. Therefore, these areas are best placed for things like wildflowers and pollinator mixes. "Water Resource Protection" identifies areas with slightly heavier or wetter soil or those near water resources like streams or ditches. They might be better suited for tusky grasses or successional scrub. "Woodland Planting" areas are suited for planting woodlands, especially near existing woodland blocks. "Wet Grassland" focuses on areas where the model detected the ground might be lying wettest. "Bird Seed Mix" is similar to pollinators but for slightly less free-draining areas, making them suitable for bird seed options.

In our help and guidance section, we have released a Countryside Stewardship recommendation. It's essential to note that this recommendation is not advice on where you should do things, but it suggests which type of stewardship options might be best suited for specific areas. For instance, it might recommend "Flower Rich Pollinator Habitats" (AB1s) or "Grassland with Low Input" (GS7) for an existing grass field. To find more detailed information on this, you can search for "e-planner" in the help and guidance section. So, do have a look at that and start to use this, not to do your stewardship for you, just to at least give you an indication of what part of the fields might be better placed for those certain interventions. The way I would probably use it is I would know I wanted to put in a pollinator mix in one of these fields. This one, in particular, is mostly priority for pollinators, so that might be a good area to put in the AB1. But again, boots on the ground are just more important. This is just giving you an indication of what could be focus areas.

If you're doing stewardship, it might be quite fun to decide where to put things on this side of the field or that side of the field. Just to take that one step further, I can see in the bottom corner the pollinator resource. It might be that I'm looking to put in a stewardship option around the edge of here. To avoid the snap-to-line function, you can turn it off by hitting the snap button. Now, when I trace, I can actually do freehand split, which can make a more natural curve. For example, I might want to take this part of my grass field out of management, fence it off, and let it stay ungrazed for five years, only cutting it once or twice in that agreement.

Now, let's talk about rule number three, which is just making sure you're assigning your Capital items to the right field parcel. Click on the parcel first before drawing the feature. For example, if I want to draw a hedgerow or a fence, I need to choose the line option and then draw it either going through the field or along the outer edge. Make sure to click on the field before drawing the capital items to ensure they have the correct field ID associated with them. If you draw all of the capital items without clicking on the field, they will all be associated with the same field parcel, which is not what you want.

To demonstrate, I can duplicate a field using the duplicate button. This creates an identical field with the same code. You can then assign different options to the duplicate fields. For example, you can have both GS2 and GS17 in two duplicate fields. Remember to adjust labels to avoid overlapping. That way, in the report, you'll have two identical shapes and areas for the different options in the same field parcel.

These are some handy tricks for working with the land app and creating your stewardship plan.

Okay, so co-locating, now I've produced a fairly arbitrary but hopefully functional stewardship plan, and I'm sure the plans you create are going to be better thought out than what I've done. I wanted to show you now the different ways that you can export and share this plan. The first thing you can do is collaborate in real-time with your clients. If you're an advisor and you've got farming clients or if you're a farmer and you want to collaborate with an advisor, you can do that using the sharing settings button at the top right.

The sharing settings button allows you to add different collaborators to your map. You can set their permission levels, which can either be read-only, so they can come in and view your plan but can't delete or edit anything; editor, which means they can do pretty much everything you can, including adding, deleting, and changing things; and publisher, which is not quite as relevant for Countryside stewardship applications but allows them to put plans next to one another for a landscape recovery or facilitation fund view of the different stewardship options.

You can add collaborators by their email address, and they will receive an email with instructions to join. You can also send them a direct link to the map if needed. Other ways you may want to export the plan is by getting a breakdown of your stewardship agreement by high levels. You can do this using the reports button. It gives you a high-level summary of all the different options you put in, the total hectarage, and the total length or number of units for each feature.

Once you've completed your Annex form, it's a good idea to cross-reference your map with the Annex form to ensure everything is included. You can download this table as an Excel file, but for your stewardship application and completing your Annex form, you'll need a more detailed breakdown. For that, click the table view button, which opens up a full application schema that's ready to be copied and pasted into your Annex 2 form. It includes every field ID or OS sheet number and grid number, the land use code, existing habitat type, option title, hectarage, length, and payment rate. This will help you accurately complete your Annex form based on the mapped data.

Okay, this form you can view online for free, but if you want to download it, you now have to be in the subscription. To export it as a downloadable file, you do need to be in the subscription process for that. This is where you can start to see whether you have properly allocated those Capital items. I've had a couple of clients reach out and say all of my fields are either unknown or all of my fields are allocated to the same field parcel because they didn't follow those steps.

Now, as a note, if you do get to the point where you've completed a stewardship, and you realize all your field parcels are wrong, please get in touch because we have actually got a tool that can clip it all back together that we're hoping to release soon. It's a way of tidying up the field, so don't panic and don't feel you need to manually go through everything. But I'm really trying to do a proactive way of saying the way that you fix it is this. But if you need to be reactive because you realize down the line that you've made a mistake, don't panic, get in touch with support. They'll be more than happy to help, and you can do that through this chat function at the bottom, which is here, send us a message.

Okay, it's the time. Okay, so we've still got another 40 minutes left for the webinar. So, I think 10 more minutes or 15 more minutes of demo, and then we'll go on to the Q&A because I can see there's plenty of questions coming through, which is great.

So I'm just going to spend the next five minutes just showing you the printing function and how you can print RPA-compliant maps, which means that you no longer need to use your crayons to submit a supporting map for your stewardship application. The first thing to say is that we've got guidance here. If you search for "What do I need RPA print," probably here we go. It's called "Countryside Stewardship Scheme Mapping Guidance." That's what I want. So, we've got an updated guidance that explains all the different steps you need to take to submit a digital copy of your application for your option maps and for the farm app as well.

There are a couple of key things that you need to do. You need to make sure that field parcels are visible. You need to make sure you're using the most up-to-date RPA import. So, if you've basically not refreshed your SBI number since last year and maybe something's changed, just make sure you're using an up-to-date RPA import. Make sure things are clearly labeled. For example, AB9 with both the code and the hectarage or the code and the meterage as well. I'm not going to go through all of these, but please just make sure you read this, including using the reset style button. We, by default, use the RPA styling, but if you are using your own bespoke colors, for example, you've made your AB8s neon spotty or something like this just for making it easier to see the difference between the AB8s and AB9s, make sure you do come in, hit the style, and hit reset, and that just goes back to default.

Okay, so what I would probably do just to get my map ready is, firstly, I would turn off all of the labels, and you can either do that by hitting the three dots and hitting "select all" and then choosing all of your features, and that should allow you to at least turn off all of those field IDs en masse. Okay, a name? I don't know what that is, so I can turn that off as well. So, yeah, I've basically reset all of my fields apart from the hectarage. I can see here of those ones or area like that, and the label for this, I would then unmask. For her feature type, I put her polygon, a line, and a point, just check, make sure the labels are correct. So, if I start with areas, turn areas on, so for all of them, if I'm following that guidance, I need to make sure that I've got the code and the hectarage and the field parcel ID labeled. So, I would basically go in here and make sure I've got hectarage like this. I would then turn on the code, and then I turn on the what's the other thing, it just a field ID. Actually, this one. Okay, so now, for all the at least for all the polygons, I've turned on the labels correctly. However, you'll notice that it's also labeled things that haven't got any use. Once I've then done that, I would then just right-click on one of the ones that haven't got a use, and then you can choose "select feature type," and then I can unmask, turn off all of those labels for the things that aren't actually going into a stewardship application. That already has tidied it quite a bit. So, repeat that process for all your points and all your lines.

Once you're happy with what the map looks like, then following this guidance, once you've got all the labels correct, just make sure you're using the print function. A couple of key things you need to make sure you've got your single business identifier and application reference number clearly stated on your map, which I will show you now. And also, just make sure you're printing at one of these two scales. Okay, so one to five thousand or one to ten thousand. And there has to have a legend. So, to quickly walk through that process is, I'm going to hit the print function at the top right, choose a new frame, choose whether I want it portrait or landscape, which for this one is A4, and then the scale. I want to print at a fixed scale of one to five thousand, which is that, and actually, coincidentally, that kind of fits perfectly. If it doesn't all fit within one frame, you do need to print off twice, but actually, that fits all of my farm in one.

Once you're then happy with the print, you can then come and customize it, so you can change everything you need. I'm actually going to give it a header called "CSS SBI 123456," whatever it is. And then application reference. I don't know how many letters of an application reference. We've recently added that you can change the text size of all components now. So, I can add that as a point, and then you can add the bottom here, maybe farm name and email address, for example, at the bottom.

One other thing when you're zoomed in on premium, if you don't like this styling, you can change that to standard, and then you can also change to black and white as well. So, you can get a digital map for your farm.

The legend you need to add, you can do like so. One thing that I need to look into actually, we used to say the code, didn't we? It used to automatically say "AB1," like prefixing all of these with the stewardship code. So, that's something that has recently disappeared, so I will have a look at that. So, that should automatically say what those codes represent as well. It should look like that, and that should then allow us to order them in the right order as well.

Okay, so once you've got your legend, and you're happy with it (as I'm not quite am, but getting there), when you've tidied it up and followed all that guidance in terms of the application reference number and SBI, it's then ready to print. You can then either do a print preview or commit to the charges by hitting "buy now" and calling it a demo, and that will export a fully RPA-compliant map for your use in the application. It's styled correctly, labeled correctly, and includes a legend for all those different features. The principle is exactly the same for your farm app as well.

So while that's processing, I will show you what the output looks like in a moment if there's time. But that will be available in a moment through "my prints," which is found at the top right here. The thing I want to quickly show you is photo evidencing. Quite a few people don't realize that we have actually got a new photo layer that's at the bottom left of your screen here. So, you can upload photos, and Land will host them for you throughout the duration of your scheme. Before you go into the scheme, you need to take "before" photos of all the stewardship of all the capital items, and you can upload them in bulk from your computer by hitting this plus icon and then searching for photos. I want geo-referenced photos, and then normally, farm, and I can upload these three at once. And actually, then render, and then I hit finish, and then it drops those photos, providing you've toggled it on, at the left of where those photos were taken as well on your phone. So, you can see an image of that file. Now, if you're using the mobile app, this is the perfect example of when the mobile app is useful. You can basically go once you've agreed with this client, or you've this is your stewardship application, take the mobile app out, come on to your map, and take all the photos, and they will automatically pre-populate all across this farm. You'll start to see all these different photos to then be super organized. Although it's not essential, I'd highly recommend it. You can actually link the photos to the stewardship scheme. So, say this photo was evidencing this Capital item, which is my sheep netting that I'm yet to put in. You can see if I click on that photo, I'm repairing this sheep netting. What you can do is you can hit this "linked plan" button and link that particular photo to your stewardship application. So, I've linked one photo to my stewardship. The reason you do that is when you turn off your photo layer and I just turn on my stewardship, just that one photo is showing. So, the photo that's relevant to the stewardship plan is showing. When you start taking hundreds, if not thousands of photos, and your RPA inspector comes around and you want to be really smart and slick and just show them the photo evidence, you can then just get them to turn on the relevant layer, and they then have a copy of where that photo is, and the ones that are relevant.

You can also then add a description like "FG2 before" etc., before photo. The final thing to say is that this is a virtual photo, so this is a photo that can actually be moved. Not to say, but this source photo you can't move. This virtual photo you can move because it's just a link to the project. If I turn off the project, this one you can't move because it's intrinsically got the data of where it was taken and it has all the metadata that allows that robustness. That particular photo was taken back in March 2018.

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