The Rural Payments Agency has announced that 77 percent of eligible claimants (66,800 farmers and landowners) had received their BPS payments by the end of January.

In its latest update, published on Wednesday, RPA said more than £1 billion has now been paid out.

However, whether the Agency has managed to meet its target of making the “vast majority” of payments by the end of the month is still up for debate.

On Wednesday, RPA Chief Executive Mark Grimshaw said, “I understand how important it is to know more about the timings of payments for farmers who are running a business.”

Discussing the Agency’s next target, Mr Grimshaw added, “Our aim is to have paid almost all eligible farmers by the end of March with a few thousand of the more complex cases taking slightly longer, as they did under the Single Payment Scheme.”

He said the RPA has been working with voluntary organisations to support farmers experiencing hardship.

Responding to the announcement on Monday, the NFU called for action to make the remaining 20,000 outstanding BPS payments as quickly as possible, and criticised the ambiguity of RPA commitments, including the “vast majority” target, which never had a definite figure attached to it.

Union Vice President Guy Smith said: “It’s totally unacceptable that thousands of cash-strapped farmers are left waiting for millions of pounds in BPS claims. Farmers must be paid as soon as possible. The danger is now that delays may compromise the ability to smoothly implement the application window for 2016.

“It’s especially alarming when many farmers only received notice that they were ‘unlikely to be paid by the end of January’ in the last few days, assuming quite rightly they were going to be paid but haven’t been.”