DAERA has given its consultation on wildlife intervention a two-week extension. It now closes at 5:00pm on Friday 9 October 2026. The Department released a scientific report that had been referenced in the consultation documents but not published, and Minister Andrew Muir decided consultees should have time to read it before responding. Anyone who has already replied can send further comments before the new date.
The consultation is about badgers. The number underneath it is not. The consultation document puts the bovine TB programme at more than £70 million in 2025/26, including £54 million in compensation, with herd incidence at 9.78% for the twelve months to April 2026 and confirmed herd prevalence at 14.05% to December 2025. That £54m is money that lands in Northern Ireland farm bank accounts, and almost all of it is taxable. Whether it is taxed well or badly is decided by paperwork that has to exist before the breakdown, not after it.
What the consultation asks, and what it does not
It asks whether wildlife intervention should form part of the eradication programme at all, and if so which of three options should be taken forward: a Non-Selective Cull, Test and Vaccinate or Remove, or Vaccination Only. It asks about delivery methods, about whether the private sector or farmer-led organisations should deliver it under DAERA oversight, about licensed lay vaccinators, and about whether the Blueprint for Eradication contains the right actions. The Department has not reached a view and says no option is presented as preferred.
It explicitly does not seek views on compensation decisions. That matters, because the compensation rate has its own history. DAERA consulted separately in early 2024 on cutting the rate from 100% of market value to 90%, and to 75% a year after that. That consultation opened on 12 January 2024 and closed on 8 March 2024; a summary of responses is published and the rate today is still 100%. Nothing in the current consultation changes that, and nothing in it commits the Department either way.
What the compensation actually covers
Reactors are removed by DAERA-subcontracted hauliers for immediate slaughter. The valuation is agreed between a Department valuer and the owner; failing agreement, the owner selects and pays for an independent valuer from a DAERA list, and a Valuation Appeals Panel can be asked to decide, with findings that are binding. DAERA's own TB Control Programme page is where the process sits.
What that buys you is the market value of the animals. It does not buy you the trade you cannot do while restricted. Once a herd's officially tuberculosis free status is suspended or withdrawn, movement restrictions apply immediately through NIFAIS, and at their tightest that means no live moves to market, to export, to other holdings or to slaughter. On a total depopulation, nothing comes onto the premises for 60 days, a full cleansing and disinfection has to be inspected and passed, and a test follows two months after restocking. Through all of it the feed bill, the wages and the finance payments carry on. The compensation is a lump of taxable income arriving in the same year the trading income stops. That combination is what does the damage.
An illustration: 24 reactors on a Co. Tyrone dairy farm
Built from published tax rules, not a client file. The valuations are assumed for the illustration — your own figures come from the Department valuer, not from an article. Take a sole trade dairy farm outside Omagh, accounts made up to 31 March, 120 milking cows and 60 followers, all carried as trading stock because no herd basis election was ever made. A breakdown in November 2026 removes 18 milking cows and 6 in-calf heifers.
| Animals | Compensation | Book value | Profit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milking cows | 18 | £32,400 | £10,800 | £21,600 |
| In-calf heifers | 6 | £7,800 | £2,700 | £5,100 |
| Total compensation profit | 24 | £40,200 | £13,500 | £26,700 |
Without a claim, that £26,700 sits in the 2026-27 profit on top of a normal trading year. Northern Ireland farmers pay UK income tax rates — the devolved bands apply in Scotland only — so a sole trader pushed above £50,270 is on 40% income tax plus 2% Class 4 National Insurance, a marginal 42p in the pound. Below that line it is 20% plus 6%, so 26p.
With a spreading relief claim, the compensation profit comes out of the year of slaughter and goes back evenly over the following three years. HMRC sets the mechanics out at BIM55185: all the compensation is charged as a receipt in the period of slaughter, the total compensation profit is deducted from that year's profits, and an equal amount is added to trading receipts spread over the next three years.
| Taxed in 2026-27 | Rate | Tax | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No claim | £26,700 | 42% | £11,214 |
| Spread, £8,900 × 3 years | nil | 26% | £6,942 |
| Difference | £4,272 |
£4,272 on one breakdown, from a claim rather than a transaction. The saving comes from the rate difference between one spiked year and three ordinary ones, so it shrinks if the farm is comfortably in the higher rate every year and grows if the breakdown is what pushed it there. One hard limit: spreading relief can only reduce the taxable profit of the year of slaughter — it cannot create or increase a loss.
The election that changes the answer
Spreading relief is the fallback. The herd basis is the better answer, and a TB breakdown is one of the few moments the door reopens.
Under the herd basis a production herd is treated more like a capital asset than like stock. Where a herd basis election is in place and the slaughtered animals are the whole or a substantial part of a production herd, the compensation is brought into account only when the replacement animals join the new herd. And section 126 ITTOIA 2005 gives a fresh right to elect outside the normal time limits precisely when a whole or substantial part of a production herd is slaughtered under a disease control order and compensation is payable. The section defines a disease control order as one made under the law relating to animal diseases by central government, a devolved authority, a local authority or another public authority — which is why DAERA's programme sits inside a relief most guidance describes in DEFRA's language.
The normal deadlines are tight and easy to miss. For a sole trader the election runs to the first anniversary of the normal self assessment filing date for the tax year containing the end of the first period of account in which the herd was kept. For a partnership it is twelve months after that filing date; for a company, two years from the end of the first accounting period. An election must be in writing, must name the class of herd, and is irrevocable.
The cash basis quietly removes both
This is the part worth checking this week. HMRC's guidance is blunt: the rules on spreading relief and the herd basis do not apply when calculating profits on the cash basis. The cash basis has been the default for unincorporated businesses since 6 April 2024, which means a farm can be on it without anyone having decided to be. On the cash basis, the compensation is taxable in the year the money arrives, in full, with no three-year spread and no herd basis behind it.
A farm with a breakdown the size of the illustration, on the cash basis, has no claim to make. The choice of basis is made in the accounts, long before a reactor turns up, and it is the single cheapest thing to get right in advance.
Three things to do this week
Respond to the consultation. It closes at 5:00pm on Friday 9 October 2026 and anyone can respond — the DAERA consultation on Citizen Space carries the documents, including the scientific report the extension was granted for.
Find out whether a herd basis election exists for your herd. There is no special form, and accounts or computations that clearly show the herd basis being used for a class of animals can count as one. If nothing in your file shows it, assume there is no election.
Confirm which basis your accounts are prepared on. Cash or accruals, in writing, for the current year. If it is cash and you keep a production herd, that is a conversation to have now rather than in the week a test comes back.
What is still uncertain, and when we will know
Three things are genuinely open. Whether Northern Ireland adopts any wildlife intervention at all, and which — the Department has published no preferred option and no timetable for a Ministerial decision beyond saying responses will inform it alongside the scientific evidence and impact assessments. Whether licensed lay vaccination of badgers is introduced here. And whether the compensation rate stays at 100% of market value; the 2024 proposal to phase it to 90% and then 75% was consulted on and the responses summarised, but this consultation deliberately excludes compensation, so any change would have to be announced on its own.
What is not uncertain is the tax treatment, and that is the part you control. If you farm here and want the herd basis, the accounting basis and the January payment looked at together, that is what our Northern Ireland team does from the office in Ballymena — and the farm accounts guide covers the stock and scheme income side in full.