How not to design a grant scheme

HOW many Department of Agriculture and Food staff does it take to design a mess?

Over 4,000, presuming that everyone in the organisation’s huge staff mucked in to manufacture the Farm Waste Management Scheme.

It was guaranteed to get a big response from farmers when launched more than a year ago. They were punch drunk since the Nitrates Directive had been adopted three months earlier, with warnings of prosecutions and jail sentences if farmers broke any of the hundreds of Directive rules.