Farming in Protected Landscapes Evaluation

Tender description

This tender is looking to evaluate the Farming in Protected Landscape Programme, which will fund National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty to collaborate with farmers and other land managers to deliver a range of projects within their local landscapes between June 2021 and March 2024. The programme will support delivery of outcomes for nature, climate, people and place, contributing to the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, net zero and 30 by 30 commitments. The evaluation will assess process, outcomes and value-for-money, and improve understanding of what works, for whom, in what circumstances and why, across the four delivery themes of nature, climate, people and place. The evaluation will help Defra to gather and generate evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programme; show what Protected Landscapes can deliver in partnership with farmers and land managers when provided with resource and space to do so; demonstrate project outcomes and wider impacts; and capture learning to feed back into programme design and implementation in the Protected Landscapes and inform future policy development in Defra. The evaluation contractors will be responsible for all aspects of the evaluation, using programme and project level monitoring and reporting data, other existing data, and collecting new data as appropriate. We anticipate that there will be a strong process evaluation component, particularly given the emphasis on partnership working, and that evaluators might consider theory-based approaches for the outcome and impact evaluation, such as realist or qualitative comparative analysis. Innovative or novel research methods and alternative approaches are welcome. A market engagement event will be held on 12th July 2-3pm via Teams. This will provide an opportunity to ask questions or request clarity on any parts of the specification that may be unclear. The link for the teams meeting can be found below: https://tinyurl.com/c7fsvc38