Direct payments to fall 7.3% in lowland England for 2015

English lowland Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments will be worth about 7.3% less than last year and almost 16% lower than two years ago.

The drop is mainly due to the impact of changing currency values – a stronger sterling and weaker euro.

This puts the BPS lowland rate at £178.85/ha (using the 2015 euro-sterling conversion rate of €1=£0.73129), calculates Andersons.

This includes the greening element and takes account of a 12% transfer to the Pillar 2 pot which funds environmental and rural growth schemes.

See also: Farm leaders call for BPS early payment commitment

However payments for those in the severely disadvantaged and moorland areas will rise to £177.57/ha and £46.92/ha respectively because of the way funds are being redistributed between the English BPS regions under the BPS regime.

The Rural Payments Agency confirmed the values on 10 November and stated that it was on track to make the majority of BPS payments in full before the end of December and the vast majority by the end of January 2016.

However it has still not put a figure on these.

Entitlement values are recalculated each year to reflect changes in the number of entitlements claimed.

The rates are slightly higher than estimated most recently by Andersons suggesting that fewer entitlements were claimed, said the firm’s head of business research Richard King.

“The raising of the minimum claim size to 5ha may have played a part in this, as will the cancellation of any unclaimed entitlements in 2015. 

“Also, quite a low proportion of the BPS budget has had to be siphoned-off to fund National Reserve claims – just 0.75% of the total budget.”

The net payments shown for 2015 include an assumption that 1.39% will be cut from payments to cover EU financial discipline measures introduced in 2013 Brussels to ensure spending does not exceed the commission’s budget, but this is still to be confirmed.