A month after the Rural Payments Agency announced it had met its SPS payment target on the first banking day of December, the agency has announced it is continuing to experience its best ever performance on the Single Payment Scheme. At the end of December, the first month in the SPS payment window, 93.4 percent of RPA customers had received their payments and 88.3 percent of the total estimated fund value had been paid.

By the end of the month, RPA had paid out over £1.44 billion to 97,120 farmers, reaching 5 percent more claimants than in December 2011. RPA chief executive Mark Grimshaw said the performance "significantly exceeds" the Agency's targets of paying 91 percent of customers and 84 percent by value by the end of December.

Mr Grimshaw continued, "I was able to announce at the start of December that we had met our end-of-month targets on the first banking day of the payment window and I am pleased that those excellent achievements have continued. RPA is delivering a much improved level of service to English farmers in administering SPS and the latest figures continue to show just how far we have come over the last two years."

Oversight of the RPA, including targets, began following several years of poor service and in light of the findings of a government report, which was highly critical of the agency's activity and IT systems.

The next step for RPA is to meet its commitment to pay 97 per cent of payments by both value and number of customers by the end of March.

RPA also reminded farmers wishing to transfer their SPS entitlements that the agency must receive the completed Request for changes to the Rural Land Register and for the transfer of entitlements (RLE 1) by 2nd April 2013 in order for the request to be processed on time.