Red Tractor has announced improvements to its member portal, designed to reduce assessment preparation time, stress and paperwork.
The updates enable live, geotagged photos to be taken directly within the portal, to be used as compliance evidence. The portal automatically captures location, date and time data, removing the need for manual records of tasks.
“This addresses a genuine frustration farmers and growers have shared, which is maintaining paper records for routine tasks that could be evidenced far more efficiently,” says Philippa Wiltshire, director of standards and operations at Red Tractor.
“This is about making the portal work around how farms actually operate.”
Further improvements include a shortlist function, which flags high impact documents for uploading, as well as embedded links to third-party templates such as Yellow Wellies’ health and safety resources.
Philippa adds: “To help reduce the time spent preparing for audits, we’ve worked with the certification bodies to identify which documents will have the biggest impact on a farmer’s physical assessment. These can be seen on the portal using a simple toggle button.”
The organisation states that this will not affect how data is accessed, either by Red Tractor or the portal developer. Growers will retain full control over the data, as well as full choice over how the portal is used.
Red Tractor is also working with third party software providers to integrate new systems. A new crops checklist, developed with MeritAgCheck, is due to launch soon.
Jon Stewart, Director at MeritAgCheck says: “Having the Red Tractor requirements built directly into MeritAgCheck means farmers can capture the information once and use it for multiple purposes, including their farm assurance.
“The integration makes the process much smoother for our customers and ensures they stay audit‑ready without extra admin, saving them time that they can re-invest into other activities.”