Farming News - Five year plan, beginning of the end for the RPA?
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Five year plan, beginning of the end for the RPA?
The Rural Payments Agency claims that more farmers will receive their single payments on time thanks to a planned overhaul of its much maligned computer system. The RPA’s IT systems have been criticised since as far back as 2006, when an EFRA committee report into the Agency found it to be unsatisfactory.
The new measures were announced in parliament today as part of the agency’s five year improvement plan, laid out by Farming Minister Jim Paice, who also sits on the RPA Oversight Board. The minister last month reported that the RPA had performed better than any previous payment year in delivering single farm payments, despite working to a reduced budget.
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Mr Paice said that further improvements need to be made at the RPA; he suggested the areas which are ripe for improvement include, “Data, controls, IT, organisational structure, systems and people.”
Five year plan
The first part of the government’s plans for the RPA is its ‘Strategic Improvement Plan,’ which involves a series of 45 projects running between 2012 and 2015 and focuses on updating data, technology and personnel reshuffling. Mr paice said, “These projects will be crucially important in ensuring that the Agency is on a sound footing to deal with the amount of change it faces over the next five years.”
The second phase of the five year plan, which could be seen as ideological tinkering of the RPA, will run from 2014-17 and will look at ‘delivery options. Mr Paice said the ‘Future Options Programme’ is currently “looking at alternative models for delivering some or all of RPA’s business following the CAP scheme changes post-2013,” and that, “Once the right operating model for the future is established the FOP will assess delivery options, which may include various forms of outsourcing.” This may take place over the next two years.
Paice said that stripping the RPA thusly carries the objective of “[Providing] a much better service to RPA’s customers and much better value for money for the taxpayer.” For now though, Defra will continue to invest in the agency.
Mr Paice said Defra will be investing an additional £21.8 million into the agency over the next financial year, with a further £19.1 million provisionally earmarked for the following two financial years. Full details of the changes will be unveiled in the business plan for 2012/13, which is scheduled to be published in April.
Mr Paice prophetically stated, “This represents a serious commitment to finally drawing a line under RPA’s unfortunate legacy and putting it in the best possible position to implement the CAP 2013 reforms.”
Though RPA officials have acknowledged that the agency has, in the past, handled complaints and appeals poorly, the agency has reported steady progress and improvements in performance over the past year. This includes setting up a charter, drawn up with farmers, and making record payments in this year’s SFP payment window.
RPA said that, at the beginning of the week, £1.56bn, or 90.7 per cent of its total sum for allocation, had been paid out to 98,185 English farmers (representing 93.7 per cent of eligible claimants).