More than 50% of Welsh BPS payments due in first week

More than half of eligible Welsh farmers will receive their Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments in the first week after the window opens on Tuesday (1 December), says deputy minister Rebecca Evans.

And the Welsh government will also make BPS part-payments of about 80% of their full payment value to the majority of customers throughout December.

The vast majority of remaining part-payments will be made as early as possible in the new year, said Mrs Evans.

See also: Crunch time for BPS as payment window opens

The balance of payments will be made to farmers during April 2016, although a minority of payments – probate cases, for example – will take longer.

“I am very pleased to announce that farmers in Wales will start to receive their BPS part-payments from tomorrow – the first date on which payments are allowed to be made under European Commission rules,” said Mrs Evans.

“In fact, more than 50% of our farmers’ claims have already been processed and their part-payments should be with them within the first week.

“This has been helped by the fact that 72% of applications were submitted using our online service, which cuts down on mistakes and consequential delays.”

Staff at Rural Payments Wales (RPW) have been working around the clock to process the 17,000 BPS applications submitted by Welsh farmers and landowners as fast as possible.

But the deputy minister urged farmers not to call to check the progress of their claim.

“I strongly recommend farmers who have signed up to our new RPW online payments system to use it to check whether they have any outstanding queries, rather than call the RPW call centre in Caernarfon, or our divisional offices, or farm liaison staff,” she added.

“Calling RPW staff will simply take them away from validating further claims for payment.

“I appreciate farmers will still have queries of a non-BPS payment nature, but our well-respected Farm Liaison Service (farmliaisonservice@wales.gsi.gov.uk) will be on hand throughout this period, including on our stand throughout the Winter Fair, to provide their usual first-class service.”