Peace of mind as single payment goes online

For the first time this year all farmers in England can submit their single payment scheme applications online.

Few things in farming can be more unnerving than realising that your single payment application forms may not have arrived at the Rural Payments Agency. This is what happened to Wiltshire arable farmer William Bailey three years ago, and he vowed to do everything he could to ensure it didn't happen again.

"I did everything right. I filled in the forms in good time, checked and double-checked them, sent them by registered post in the envelope provided, and then waited for the confirmation of receipt. But it never came."

After a lot of wasted phone calls, he discovered the envelope had been sent to the wrong address, through no fault of his own. Fortunately, he had posted them six weeks before the deadline and had used Farmplan's SPS Planner software to generate his forms, so could print new ones. "I had all the data on the computer - what a relief when the confirmation finally came through."

Mr Bailey jumped at the chance to take part in last year's trial of the new electronic application route. "This time the confirmation was instantaneous. Once you've completed your forms, you hit the send button and RPA sends back a unique reference number. It's real peace of mind."

The other key advantage was the time saving. "I've not got a complicated farm, so it generally takes 4-5 hours to fill in the paper forms. Last year was brilliant, it took just half an hour and the job was done."

The farm near Chippenham comprises 194ha (480 acres) of wheat, barley and oilseed rape. This makes the annual chore of the single payment application relatively easy. But there were other good reasons he bought the SPS Planner software several years ago.

"It means you have all the correct information about your field parcels in one place. You can refer to it, print it off, cross check it. It saves time if you need to give a contractor an accurate print out, or when filling in those endless surveys."

Although he has used the software to complete SPS applications for some time, until last year this still had to be printed out, the figures transposed on to the forms and posted. The trial of the new online route meant Mr Bailey could download his data direct from RPA into the software. This is now available to all users of the software after a successful trial of 500 users and further testing carried out in conjunction with RPA.

For those using the software for the first time, downloading the data populates the on-screen forms with the field data information held by RPA, based on the previous year's application. For Mr Bailey the data was cross-checked with the data stored from the previous year. "You then go through checking each parcel number and updating it as necessary for any cropping changes. The software is simple, straightforward and logical to use," he notes.

Splitting and combining fields is handled by a simple procedure within the software. It also checks the total new size of the field parcel and makes sure you allocate each part field.

Another key advantage is that you can change the data as many times as you like - there's no clumsy crossing out, as on paper forms. Eligible areas and the area claimed for protein, energy, nuts and Hill Farm Allowance are also automatically calculated and shown on a summary page. The cross-compliance questions are again laid out logically and can be quickly answered.

"Once it's all done, you know it's accurate," Mr Bailey says. "The software does some final checks and will highlight potential errors before you send it. There's not even any signing to do."

Those making significant changes to field parcels will still have to send in supplementary paper maps. As with all correspondence with RPA, these should be marked with your Single Business Identifier number and bar code sticker, and the receipt created by the program should accompany them noting you have submitted an application online. Experience from agents trialling the online system with multiple applications has shown this system works smoothly.

But perhaps the biggest plus point of the electronic application for Mr Bailey was that he received his payment in December. "I'm assured it's just a coincidence, but that's much earlier than previous years. We usually have to fight for it; the RPA and I have a chequered history when it comes to making subsidy payments."

As with paper forms leave plenty of time to make submissions, with the deadline for 2009 SPS applications being midnight on May 15.