Scoring criteria

ELIGIBILITY 

Please note an application will be required to demonstrate ‘Yes’ for each criteria listed below.

Eligibility criteria	Yes	No
Are there at least 5 farming/growing businesses involved?	☐	☐
Has every member that is going to be involved in the project re-registered with Farming Connect?	☐	☐
Are all costs shown in the project proposal eligible to be considered as a part of the funding criteria?	☐	☐
Does this project have a realistic timescale to be completed within?	☐	☐
Does the project align with at least one of the SFS UA and at least one SLM objective?	☐	☐
Based on the above, is this project eligible as a Discussion Group project?	☐	☐

All eligible applications will be scored by an assessment panel (made up of Farming Connect team members and external personnel) and successful projects applications will be required to demonstrate the following:

Need for the activity

Ability to deliver

Value for Money

Ability to add value to the discussion group delivery

Each requirement will be weighted at 25%.

The information provided will be the basis to the selection criteria and will be used as part of an assessment and appraisal process from which a decision can be taken about the award of funding to the project application. Within the assessment of applications, Farming Connect will aim to ensure a fair distribution of projects across Wales, sectors and topics.

The information provided will be assessed against the following rating criteria;

High (80 – 100%)

The application provides robust, detailed and clear evidence in response to all the requirements

Medium (60 – 80%)

The application provides satisfactory and detailed responses against most of the requirements

Low (40 – 60%)

The application provides potentially incomplete or insufficient responses against one or more of the requirements

Minimal (>40%)

The application provides incomplete or insufficient responses against one or more of the requirements

The quality threshold for an application is a rating of a Medium overall for the below sections:

Requirement	Sections assessed against each requirement
Need for the activity	Project overview - strategic alignment The ability of the project to contribute towards future challenges The ability of the project to address local problems or opportunities The ability of the project to provide new information The level of environmental, business profitability and production efficiency consideration displayed in the project proposal
Ability to deliver	Project delivery and management The level of thinking and planning displayed in the project methodology and management Does the project offer a genuine opportunity of wider benefit to the agriculture/ growing industry in Wales? Will this project benefit farmers/growers outside of the group in Wales on a practical level?
Value for money	All costs shown in the application are realistic and justified All costs shown will result in good value for money
Ability to add value	Adding value to the discussion groups Does the project offer an opportunity for the members to focus on a practical aspect that is in line with the discussion group specification? The level of thinking and planning displayed in the project development to ensure it adds benefit to the groups delivery and aims

The applications which achieve a rating of a Medium overall for the above sections will then be ranked in order of their percentage score for the above sections and the funding available will be awarded to the top 18 scoring applications. Please note, Farming Connect reserves the right to not award the total number of projects in this application window and may may re-open a future application window.

Scoring criteria

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