The NFU will this week ask the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) if it is still on target to start making full BPS payments in December - making what it says are the majority in December and the vast majority by the end of January. 
 
NFU Vice President Guy Smith will be meeting the RPA on Friday but said there were still too many questions regarding progress. On Monday, Smith said, “At NFU October Council Mark Grimshaw stated that getting handwritten data off BP5 forms and back online had reached 93 per cent completion and work around entitlement transfer data capture was an initial focus going forward.
 
“However, 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.”

The NFU vice-president said the union has concerns about the Agency’s new IT systems, which will be used with a number of new software releases for the next phase of work on BPS claims (validating and verifying claims) and the need for further work on RLE1 forms for land changes. Concerns stem back to the hiccoughs earlier this year, when IT problems forced RPA into a U-turn on plans to switch to a ‘digital by default’ applications process.

Guy Smith said, “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.”

The NFU has also questioned the ability of the RPA to deliver payments to farmers who are also commoners, many of whom are situated in upland areas, given the different approach to the allocation of common land this year.

In late October, RPA began sending out leaflets updating almost 90,000 farmers and agents who applied for BPS funding on the next steps in the application process for this new scheme year. More information is available here.

Last week, RPA Customer Director Justin Chamberlain said, “We understand how hard-pressed farmers are and how important prompt payments are to them. We’ve input the vast majority of all claim data into the Rural Payments system and we’re now working on land and entitlement transfers.

“We are on track to start making payments from December with the majority before the end of December and the vast majority by the end of January 2016.”