The Rural Payments Agency(RPA) has published the Basic Payment Scheme(BPS) entitlement values and greening rates online today (6 November 2018).

This follows the confirmation of the BPS exchange rate for payments this year, which will start landing in bank accounts from Monday 3 December.

Under BPS, farmers need to hold an entitlement for every hectare of eligible land they are claiming on. The size of farmers’ payments will depend on how many entitlements they use, supported by eligible land and the value of those entitlements.

The greening part of payments will be calculated by taking the number of entitlements that they have used with eligible land to claim payment and multiplying it by the greening value.

Now that the rates are set, the RPA is focusing on preparing payments so these are ready to land in bank accounts when the payment window opens.

Charles Garrard, farming consultant in the Chelmsford office of Strutt & Parker, says: “The pieces of the jigsaw have now come together to enable farmers to predict what their gross payment should be for 2018, assuming they have no reductions. For example, the value of non-SDA entitlements, including the greening element, can now be calculated as £231.70/ha (£93.77/acre), which is 73p/ha more than in 2017.

“However, farmers should remember that financial discipline will be applied to all larger claims, which will cut payments by 1.411917% in 2018, with only the first €2,000 of the BPS payment exempt from this reduction. Claimants should also be aware of reductions to payment claims of over €150,000, for which any payments over this amount are reduced by 5%. Our understanding is that payments will start to arrive in farmers’ bank accounts on Monday 3 December, so now is a good opportunity to run the figures so any discrepancies can quickly be picked up.”

Mr Garrard is also reminding farmers to be extra vigilant at this time of the year as fraudsters are well aware of the timing of BPS payments, so it is important to be wary of any unexpected calls or emails from people claiming to be the bank or police.

Entitlement values

Greening rates

• The Euro exchange rate that will be used to calculate all payments is €1 = 0.89281