Assurances sought over RPA ability to climb 'payment scheme mountain'
Assurances are being sought that the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has the capacity to deliver a successful Basic Payment Scheme for 2016 whilst it deals with the issues from 2015.
"What is increasingly clear is that the RPA has a huge mountain to climb," said Tenant Farmers' Association Chief Executive, George Dunn.
"It is being significantly dragged back by the baggage of the issues from last year’s campaign rooted in the incompetence of DEFRA in attempting to force all claimants to use a digital portal that was never going to work.
"Sadly that wrongheaded decision, which the RPA managed to convince DEFRA to ditch, still has massive implications for the organisation. However, it is hard working farming families that are suffering from this past Whitehall ineptitude”.
Over 2,000 applications for 2016 Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) have been completed and submitted so far, using the online Rural Payments service.
The RPA is encouraging farmers and agents to apply online now, so that they submit their applications in good time, ahead of the May 16th deadline.
RPA Chief Executive Mark Grimshaw said: “Thousands of farmers and agents are already using the Rural Payments service to prepare, check, make changes and submit their completed applications. Some 16,872 entitlements and over 50,377 hectares of land have been transferred so far.
“Farmers and agents can access support on GOV.UK, where there’s on-screen help that takes you through the application process screen by screen. It’s also available in a printable guide.”
Dunn said “our worry is that despite all of the difficulties of last year our member call volumes are much higher this year than last.
"Whilst we are receiving swift answers from the RPA to technical questions about how to complete claims, we are making little headway on practical issues surrounding individuals whose prepopulated data is incomplete, incorrect or in large part simply missing. With only a month to the 2016 deadline this is a massive concern,” said Mr Dunn.
“The RPA has admitted that it has faced a greater level of complexity in dealing with 2015 claims subject to inspection, however, not only have these individuals remained without payment against 2015 claims they have no information about the impact of the inspections carried out on their ability to claim in 2016. This is an urgent matter which we are pressing the RPA to address,” said Mr Dunn.
“Similarly, a large number of individuals have been underpaid for 2015. We understand that the RPA will not begin to address the underpayments until June but claimants still require the underlying reasons for the underpayments to be resolved so that they can put forward valid claims for 2016 before next month,” said Mr Dunn.
“We are in constant dialogue with the RPA on all of these issues and there are regular set piece meetings looking at all of the matters of concern but time is quickly running out and unless over the coming days we see significant movement on the issues of concern, there will be inevitable pressure for a delay in the 2016 deadline for submission of claims,” said Mr Dunn.
