On Tuesday the RPA announced that two thirds of claimants have now received their BPS payments.

After a busy weekend, which saw more than 11,000 payments going out to farmers and landowners (with a total value of £320m), RPA said 57,700 payments have now been made. The agency has a target of making the “vast majority” of payments by the end of January, after it met its previous target of making half of all BPS payments by the end of December.

As of the latest update, £779 million has been paid out to farmers in this first scheme year since the BPS payment window opened in December.

Chief Executive of the Rural Payments Agency Mark Grimshaw said, “We understand the importance of BPS payments for farmers and our priority has always been to pay as many farmers as quickly as possible.

“The RPA is working seven days a week to get these payments to farmers. A wide range of claim sizes have been paid to small, medium and large sized enterprises across England and in all sectors of the industry and claims will continue to be paid as they are checked and completed.”

However, shortly before Christmas, the NFU raised concerns about the speed of payments being made; findings of a small survey conducted by the union seemed to differ from the RPA’s figures. At the time, NFU president Meurig Raymond said, “If the RPA cannot make the vast majority of payments by the end of January, as promised, then they must tell the farmers who are expecting payment. In our view, vast majority must be at least 85-90 per cent of claims in volume and value.”

On Thursday, NFU BPS advisor Richard Wordsworth commented, “Following pressure from the NFU, the RPA is now making weekly runs of payments at weekends…  We expect two more payments runs in January over the next two weekends as a result.  This latest batch starts to put the RPA back on a course to deliver payments as per their communications strategy, but we cannot assume at this stage that all those without a letter will be paid this time.”
 
Wordsworth said the NFU believes that the original group of 15,000 farmers who received letters to say their payments would not be made by the end of January has now been reduced to 13,000. He said, “This group is expected to be written to this week to be given more information and a time period from when payments would start.”
 
He said, “The RPA must ensure farmers are aware of when they are going to be paid. No one can sensibly run a business on the basis they might be paid ‘sometime after January’.”