New statistics which show "problem areas" in the Rural Payments Agency's performance has led the NFU to urge the agency to "think differently".
Statistics from the NFU’s annual BPS survey released this week show a substantial amount of farmers awaiting payments or complaining of incorrect payments.
Some farmers have also not received any support from the RPA regarding the reasons for non-payment.
The NFU said the survey is an opportunity to directly urge RPA Chief Executive Paul Caldwell to deal with "problem areas".
Both NFU Vice President Guy Smith and Mr Caldwell have addressed the NFU Council this week, where the survey results and the latest on RPA progress were discussed.
The survey shows that 86% of farmers said they had been paid from BPS 2017. However, 4% of these said they think they have been paid incorrectly.
It highlights that 74% of unpaid farmers from BPS 2017 have not received any reasons from the RPA for non-payment.
The NFU said the importance of allowing farmers the appropriate time to plan cash flows is vital, and argues that communication with claimants is an important part of this.
The survey also shows that 5% of farmers still have outstanding problems from BPS 2015 and 9% from BPS 2016.
The NFU is urging the RPA to resolve these cases to avoid compounding more recent complications from its remapping exercise.
'Just about managing'
NFU Vice President Guy Smith said the RPA is "just about managing" when it comes to current payments performance.
He said the levels of outstanding issues from previous years added to the extra workload caused by the remapping exercise could cause the "creaking cart to lose its wheels".
“We think the RPA is going to have to think differently going forward in how it engages with members to resolve all outstanding issues and mapping corrections,” Mr Smith explained.
“Only just over a quarter of those surveyed (28%) have looked at their online mapping since September 2017 but over a third of these have identified problems with the mapping.
“This is concerning for us – it will be a problem for farm businesses if issues like this snowball due to the delay in sorting them out.”
Remapping issue
Last year, the RPA announced that it was making changes to its online mapping system in order to observe European Union rules that all data held digitally is up to date by 31 October 2017.
But a number of farmers have previously spoke of concerns about changes to their land parcels and consequent anomalies concerning BPS payments.
The RPA had previously used satellite aerial imagery to update its mapping, which had in many cases been done incorrectly, according to accountants Saffery Champness.
In some instances there had been no changes to land and entitlements in the last ten years, but changes were being shown on the RPA system and a number of farmers have had to re-add features that the RPA system had removed.
It is understood that these glitches caused around a third increase in the amount of time taken to process 2017 BPS applications with the most affected areas appearing to be Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Kent.
Mr Smith added: “Whole case workers to provide a more considered and thorough service, as well as regional walk-in centres, will go a long way in ensuring certainty and confidence for farmers.”
