The Rural Payments Agency is celebrating what it claims to be its best ever performance this current scheme year.

The agency announced on Tuesday that it had made payments to 99.3 percent of Single Payment Scheme applicants by the end of March. The Agency achieved its end of March targets in February.

103,000 claimants have so far received 99.5 percent of the SPS fund by value. RPA Chief Executive Mark Grimshaw described the performance as "Impressive" and said on Tuesday that, "We have maintained our momentum throughout the payment window."

He continued, "Even though we exceeded both our domestic performance targets and the EU benchmark way ahead of schedule, we are not resting on our laurels, and have focused our efforts on paying those claims which have needed more work as quickly as possible."

The EU benchmark is to pay more than 95.238 percent of the scheme fund value by the end of June.

According to Grimshaw, RPA met its end of December SPS target on the first banking day of this year’s payment window, paying more than £1.38 billion to more than 95,000 farmers. It met its end of March target on 15 February, paying 98.4 percent of SPS customers and 97.2 percent of the estimated fund value.