SRA Annual Report 2024-25: Moor Associations
Somerset now has 10 Moor Associations, formal groupings of local farmers and landowners. In 2024, West Sedgemoor joined West Moor, Tealham and Tadham Moor, Moorlinch, Curry Moor, Aller Moor (North: Beer Wall to Aller Drove), North Moor, Penzoy, Queen’s Sedgemoor, and Pawlett Hams to West Huntspill as the latest member of a growing family (which also now has three relatives over the border in North Somerset).
All 10 Somerset associations (their areas shown mapped below) have been supported by Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA), chiefly through the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group SouthWest (FWAG SW).
Moor Associations exist for two main reasons. Firstly, to help their members find new ways of working together for their mutual benefit. Associations offer greater collective buying power, more machinery sharing, better grazing arrangements, improved farmland infrastructure and more formal chances to build-up and scale-up consensus. Secondly, following on from that, it is much easier for other organisations to engage with broadly united local associations instead of dozens of individuals. More of what people want can get done quicker.
In 2024-25, the SRA continued to fund administrative support for Moor Associations because many initiatives now underway on the Somerset Levels are predicated on their existence. For example, the ambitious Greater Sedgemoor Landscape Recovery project being led by the RSPB partly depends for its prospects of success upon working with committed blocks of landowners.
Moor Associations were one big reason why in May 2024 around 40 senior civil servants from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) came on a fact-finding mission to the Somerset Levels & Moors. In January 2025, a new Board of Moor Associations was created, to share ideas and provide mutual support.