Good progress being made on farm payments, say RPA as concerns raised

With less than a month to go before Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments to farmers in England are due to start, good progress is being made by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).

A series of transfers and checks need to be made before payments can be made. The RPA has confirmed that it has completed land and entitlement transfer processing and will write to farmers and agents to confirm that their transfers have been made in the coming weeks.

But NFU Vice President Guy Smith said there were still too many questions regarding progress.

“With less than a month to go to the start of the BPS payment window, there are still far too many unknowns around the progress of BPS claims and we need to understand more about the next phases of claim progress.

“While we appreciate the RPA is working seven days a week to process claims, we have concerns around the next phases of work on claims. The RPA is using a new IT system with a number of software releases still to be made and should now be in the middle of the post-data capture phases work – which is the validation and verification of claims. Added to this it also needs to tie in information received via the RLE1 forms for land changes. There is still a lot to do.

“We need the RPA to continue to be transparent on progress and I re-iterate our message - if delivery of payments is going to be delayed, we need to know about it sooner rather than later so that farm businesses are able to plan. We also still believe that it is only right that the RPA has an evolving plan B in place that we hope will not be needed, but can be brought in quickly to make payments if the original plan falls down.

“Of particular concern to the NFU is over the ability of the RPA to deliver payments to those farmers who are also commoners, many of which are situated in upland areas, given the different approach to the allocation of common land this year. Again the RPA needs to look at a contingency plan to make sure that cash gets to those farmers who need it in this situation.”

The RPA will issue BPS payments via BACS transfer and applicants are reminded that if their bank details have changed they need to call the Rural Services helpline on 03000 200 301 to provide new details.