The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has announced that over 51,000 farmers in England received their 2016 Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) money over the first two days of the payment window.
The payments made between 1-2 December to some 59% of eligible claimants, worth £660 million, include a range of 2016 BPS claim types and sizes, including those inspected and farmers with common land.
The RPA has said it will remain 'focused' on paying 90% of eligible claims by the end of December, despite chief executive Mark Grimshaw fighting criticism over late payments, insisting he is 'the right man for the job' to deliver an improved support payments service for farmers.
In November, a committee of MPs asked whether successive government ministers were right to declare their confidence in Mr Grimshaw's leadership at the end of a year of missed payments targets and inaccurate settlements.
Mark Grimshaw answered questions about his agency’s performance at an Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee hearing, and vowed that the last 1,000 or so of unsettled 2015 Basic Payment Scheme claims would be “closed” by early January at the latest.
More than 1,000 hill farmers could be facing a bleak winter after still not receiving BPS payments for last year, according to the NFU. They said that some of the most vulnerable farm businesses are being put at risk due to the failure of the Rural Payments Agency to make payments owed to them.
