A while back in another thread I said I would keep an eye on the issue of the timing of SFPs. Well, the news is not great.

The NFU, TFA and CLA have today been in to see Lord Rooker asking for an 80% payment in December. But they have been told that there are no plans to do this.

"Lord Rooker reiterated that the Rural Payments Agency’s target was to make full payments and to have completed 75 per cent of the total by the end of March. He said he could not and would not go further than to say that more farmers would be paid more money, earlier, than in 2007."

Well that's no surprise then is it!

Not really.

Perhaps Ld Rooker doesn't appreciate the cashflow issues especially on his >80K salary.

An update on the situation:

About 1000 farmers in England have received their full 2007 single farm payment, following live testing of its systems by the Rural Payments Agency.

The total amount of money that has been distributed is £8m and it has been paid to a mix of people - some are claimants who applied to be paid in sterling and others are farmers who asked to be paid in euros.

An RPA spokesman said that the objective had been to test the process to make sure that at every step things were working properly.

It was not possible to predict when the bulk of payments would start, he added. There would be more testing, but so far things had gone "smoothly".

Its fairly pathetic really

I have a small claim in France

The DPU(or SFP) was in my bank on Monday3rd December

Roger Chatterton

 

What I can't help remembering is all those promises two years ago which were along the lines of "I know it has been bad this year, but it will be much better in future". The RPA has got better at getting payments out and things do speed up each year, but if you compare with Wales, Scotland (and obviously France) things are still pitiful.

My client still has to paid for 2005 yet so I do wish they would hurry up!!

Is that a payment correction or any payment at all?

Isabel Davies:

Is that a payment correction or any payment at all?

No payment at all!

That's incredible. Government claims that the only people left like that are very difficult cases involving divorce, probate etc Is that the case?

we are also waiting for 2005 corection. david.

The Estate is complicated and divided into a large number of businesses but all under one umbrella businesses so we have been put on one SBI which has caused the confusion for RPA.

Fingers crossed something comes in this FY as it is really effecting some of the smaller businesses especially linked to bad summer weather and FMD restrictions.

 

When we were in London last week Isabel, I told Don Curry we had just been hit with a right whammy. According to our accountant we made a large profit on our last trading year, this being end of March. Knowing that milk prices hadn't been any good until August this year i investigated further only to find out that the first sfp was late, the second on time - result two years payments in one year whch has created havoc with our trading figures. You can average out but it doesn't really help. So one year hardly any reasonable profit, next year we're looking at 40% tax! Someone somewhere needs to give the RPA a good kicking up the proverbial rear. Is the NFU going to have a word with the revenue dept because farmers in England are being taken for a ride! 

Darling

Just on a point of tax law - so you can educate your accountant - when SFP replaced all the other subsidies, the Revenue decreed that it should be treated as income for the year or years to which it applied (ie. the accounting years which the SFP year related to).  If the SFP is not received in whole or in part at the accounting year end the relevant proportion of it must be accrued as income.  So those poor sods who have not yet received their 2005 entitlement will be paying tax on it nonetheless!