Farm leaders claim BPS cash slowed to ‘disappointing dribble’

The NFU has sounded an alarm bell over progress with the Basic Payment Scheme, claiming that an initial spurt of payments has slowed to a “disappointing dribble”.

NFU vice-president Guy Smith said the union had major concerns about stalled progress in getting cash to farmers and there were now “major question marks” as to whether the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) would hit its payment targets.

The RPA has repeatedly promised it will pay the majority of payments by the end of December and the “vast majority” by the end of January.

“After a flying start with 36,000 payments going out in the first week of December the initial spurt has turned into a very disappointing dribble,” said Mr Smith.

See also: Only 25% of NFU members have received SFP says union

“To add to this disappointment, a survey of NFU members shows payments are heavily skewed to the very small payments, hence more than 75% of NFU members are saying they haven’t seen any money.”

Mr Smith said even more worrying was the number of letters going out to farmers – dubbed the “letter of doom” in some quarters – informing claimants they are unlikely to be paid by the end of January.

To date 15,000 letters have been sent out. The union is worried that there may be more in this situation, but they have not yet even received a letter.

“If the RPA are struggling to pay these claims in January there might still be a lot of people unpaid at Easter. This could then start to impact on the application window for 2016,” said Mr Smith.

The union is calling for greater transparency on payment progress and for plans to be put in place for partial payments to be issued to anyone not paid by early February.

A spokesman for the Rural Payments Agency said as of 8 December more than 36,000 farmers had been paid a total of £293m.

A further update is expected just prior to the Christmas break.

The spokesman rejected the suggestion that only small farms had been paid so far, claiming that payments had already gone to businesses of all sizes and ranged from £500-£150,000.

However, a graphic published by the agency on its Twitter account last week showed that over three-quarters of the payments made so far are under €15,000 (£11,045).

The spokesman said: “We remain on track to make payments on over half of eligible claims by the end of the month and the vast majority by the end of January.”