Give farmers a break – that is the plea to the Rural Payments Agency

Farming leaders are quite rightly calling on the RPA to take a lenient attitude to genuine mistakes made by farmers this year as the new Basic Payment Scheme is in such chaos.

The RPA have had to delay the application deadline by a month following the abandonment of their online application process in favour of a paper based system.

The failure to get the online process up and running means farmers will now have to carry out calculations manually which previously were supposed to be done automatically by the online system.

So farmers are now exposed to making errors which could have a significant impact on the payments they will receive as penalties are applied.

Also, having printed out a number of the forms that I have received by email on behalf of clients, there is clearly plenty of scope for basic mistakes to creep in.

For example, in contrast to the old paper forms which were printed in a booklet where all the information on one field could be completed on one line crossing two facing pages of the booklet, this is no longer possible because the two pages now have to be printed separately.

Therefore part of the information for each field will have to be completed on two separate sheets of paper. There are 11 fields per sheet and 10 columns to be completed for each field, four on the first page and six on the second page.

What used to be a reasonably straightforward task of following one line across two pages in a booklet has been made more complicated than it should.

A facility to print two A4 pages on one A3 sheet of paper would have been a great help both to farmers and the RPA but that does not seem possible at present.

So if your farm receives a visit from an RPA inspector this year, you should not sign off the inspector’s findings without looking at them very carefully and ensuring you have a witness present as to what is said.

In my experience such inspectors often downplay the potential consequence of their findings, partly so they can complete their task and possibly also because they do not always appreciate the consequence their findings may have on a farmer’s support payments.

Therefore utmost care is required this year in completing the BPS application form and advice should be sought if an inspector comes to call later in the year.  

James Stephen MRICS FAAV
Partner
Rural Practice Chartered Surveyor, Wells
T: 01749 683381
E: james.stephen@carterjonas.co.uk