The Rural Payments Agency has recorded its best ever performance on the first day of the SPS payment window.

On Monday, RPA announced that it had already surpassed last year's performance on Single Payment Scheme, making more payments than ever before on the first banking day of the payment window and meeting its end of December targets four weeks ahead of schedule.

The Agency paid out £1.37 billion to almost 100,000 SPS customers on Monday. The payment covers 95 percent of SPS customers and 91.4 percent of the total estimated fund value.

RPA's end-of-month target was to make payments to 93 per cent of customers, totalling 86 percent of the total fund value.

Environment Secretary Liz Truss congratulated the Agency on its performance. In a written ministerial statement, she said, "Over the last four years the Rural Payments Agency has improved beyond recognition and I am delighted that once again almost all farmers received their CAP funding on the first day of the payment window. I congratulate everyone involved at the Agency in achieving another record-breaking performance in the final year of the Single Payment Scheme.

"Food and farming is an economic powerhouse of our economy, worth £100 billion and employing one in eight people. I am determined to do everything I can to help this vital industry to thrive."

Mark Grimshaw, RPA Chief Executive, commented on the record payment speed, "This performance shows just how far we have come in our drive to become a trusted, efficient and effective organisation and I want to thank our people and our industry partners who worked so hard to achieve this outcome.

Grimshaw said the Agency's achievement on SPS payments delivers on the RPA Business Plan pledge to improve service to farmers, whilst preparing to deliver on new CAP policies and a new rural payments system next year.

He continued, "If farmers want to be paid as early as possible next year, then I would urge them to register on the new rural payments online service as soon as invited to do so. That's because for this, the first year of Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), there will be lots to do as we gather new information and ask farmers to check that the details we hold are still correct. Once all their details are correct on our new online service it will be a lot quicker to apply in future years."