Things must be bad at the Rural Payments Agency. I’ve just found out that the main press officer has decamped to the Home Office – talk about out of the frying pan into the fire!
The good news is that he has already been replaced and the new guy has had a lucky break in that the agency actually has something positive to say for once. It turns out that close to 22,000 farmers have now received a full 2006 single farm payment and more are on the way.
The bad news is that the RPA's chief executive knows that things aren't going to keep going swimmingly well. In a statement he said:"We will continue to make payments as quickly as possible. Our target remains to pay 96.14% of funds by the end of June. This remains challenging."
June..challenging..oh dear...
Comments (2)
The RPA might want to take a lead from John Reid's plans and start splitting their 'department'. As was mooted recently, if the Home Office kept splitting and splitting, eventually each split department would only have one ecsaped convict to track down each. Suddenly the stats don't seem quite so bad.
One for the RPA...!?
Comment left on February 1, 2007 9:57 AM
Posted on February 1, 2007 09:57
Hi Isabel
I'm sure we've probably reported this somewhere but do we know whether, and how much, DEFRA got fined by the EU for missing the target payment window last year, and if they don't make it this year, will the fines escalate for it being rubbish two years in a row?
Comment left on February 1, 2007 3:28 PM
Posted on February 1, 2007 15:28