New CAP rules this year meant the agency's performance in paying applicants quickly dropped from the 97% achieved in December 2014 to around 51% in December this year. Around 90% of farmers have now received their payments, but the delay has created cash flow problems and confusion for many.

Report key recommendations:

• The RPA should consider part-payments or early payments in complicated cases if necessary, to avoid hardship for farmers facing cash flow issues. 
• Communications has been a challenge for the RPA this year. It ensure it is appropriately resourced with enough trained staff to deal sympathetically with queries and complaints, and it should set Key Performance Indicators for communications and customer service.  
• Defra must continue to work with the EU to reduce the amount of disallowance penalties that are charged as a result of payment errors, and within its own processes to minimise disallowance risks. The UK has paid more than £642 million in disallowance over the past 10 years – in effect, fines for wrongly apply the CAP rules.

Chair's comment: 

Neil Parish MP, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Chair, said:

"Farmers face extreme hardship as prices for produce are low. 

Many producers rely on CAP payments to pay their bills so it is unacceptable that farmers are left uncertain over when their payments will arrive.

The RPA did decide to make bridging payments to unpaid farmers in April, which were welcome, but it is disappointing that it took so long for them to be issued."

Mr Parish also highlighted confusion over communications from the RPA about payments and the length of delays: 

"Many farmers have struggled to work out what their entitlements are under the new CAP system, and it has been difficult for them to clarify their numbers with the RPA. 

As the RPA now has to take applications for next year at the same time as paying the remaining 2015 claims, it  needs to make sure that next year's process is set up to provide good customer service for farmers, and to minimise the fines that will be charged by the EU for any errors in the payment processing. 

We expect a return to 2014's performance levels of 90% payments made by the end of December this year."

Background

The Rural Payments Agency has come under repeated criticism from House of Commons Select Committees over the past year for failures in its CAP-D IT project to automate payments of CAP money to farmers and rural businesses. 

Due to problems with the RPA's IT system, some farmers have waited over 16 months between payments that should come yearly, and coupled with low farmgate prices for produce this has caused significant hardship for many farmers and farming groups. 

Farmers have struggled to understand their entitlements and have experienced difficulties in communicating with the RPA about outstanding issues with their claims. 

2016 application window

The application window for 2016 payments is due to close before the RPA expects to have made all of the payments for 2015, and it is important that claims are made and paid accurately to avoid hefty disallowance fines from the EU. 

The Committee held oral evidence sessions with the Chief Executive of the RPA, Mr Mark Grimshaw, and with the Minister for Food, Farming and the Marine Environment, in March 2016.

NFU Comment

Reacting to the report on Tuesday, NFU Vice president Guy Smith said, “It’s encouraging that the report picks up the inconsistent service given to farmers and says that all farmers should experience prompt payments and good communication.  It’s vital the RPA avoids generic communications, vague promises and long waiting times for responses to calls and correspondence.  We also welcome the call for RPA to look at their customer service standards. Sadly customer service has been a big casualty with the introduction of BPS, the impact of which has not yet been fully felt.  We are looking to RPA to be as pragmatic as possible with the processing of issues arising from poor customer service.

“The NFU is pleased that MPs see the advancing of payments a key step in helping to avoid the issues seen this year too. This is something the NFU wants to see as part of the payment approach for 2016. We do not share the Committee’s views on extending the 2016 application deadline past May 16. The RPA has made it clear that the source of so many concerns around the 2015 claims and 2016 form completion will not be clarified until this summer. An additional period of time now, in our view, will not help resolve these fundamental issues at this time."

Have you received your 2015 payments? The Rural Payments Agency announced in May that it had made either 2015 payments or bridging payments to all claimants, but some farmers have disputed the claim. Take our poll here.