One knows that there would be horrible repercussions and therefore one holds back, but the ultimate answer is to put in a County Court summons. When the modulation is so horrendous that my cash to be received is sufficiently small that I can risk it - I will. I would like to be brave enough to do it now - I am that p****d off with them, but I know we would just excite the "hit squad" scouring the place in order to exact penalties. A sad state of affairs.

I have to say that the various tales quoted here are most interesting in the variety of excuses for non-payment. You couldn't dream some of them up. Perhaps we should compile a book of them and send it to the relevant committee in Parliament (and the EU for good measure)?

We also were told we had been overpaid ,and owed over £3000 , this had to be repaid before we would recieve 2007 payment.But RPA owed us £1700 in HFA payments for 2005/6. You would think that the simplest way would be to deduct £1700 from £3000 and pay RPA the balance,but no we had to pay the whole £3000. that was in Febuary,we then recieved a partial payment on SFP, but still have not recieved the £1700 HFA payment they owe us.We have had at least 3 case workers but still they cannot get to grips with the task ,I have e-mailed our MP and he has written to the minister,but I wont hold my breath, RPA have got to be the most incompetent department in this government

I can not believe the statement from the spokeswoman of the rpa.  It shows a typical bureaucratic response which actually means "we have no idea what is going on".

I act for a lot of farmers and have been chasing redefinitions etc for absolutely ages.  If the rpa had tried to resolve the 2005 claims correctly, then there was just a chance they could get 2006 onwards correct.  They chose not to do this and instead left all historic problems to one side and proceeded to make a hash of the current years claim using the wrong figures.  Is that logical?

As for turning to "whole case workers" that is just utter nonsense.  If a case worker stays at the rpa then that in itself is a miracle but more usually they are moved to do other work.  Even when you are lucky and get a case worker who stays on the job long enough to agree with what you calculate, they then have to send it for redefinition which appears to be taking months at the moment (although I can not be sure as not one of my cases have been completed yet).

The lack of reality by the senior staff at the rpa is truly unbelievable.

The ever hopeful "tractorchaz"