Farmers must meet Single Payment Scheme deadline
English farmers waiting for confirmatory maps should still submit single farm payment applications before midnight on Monday, 17 May, the Rural Payment Agency has said.
All farmers have now been sent a set of confirmatory or interim Rural Land Registry maps, said an agency spokeswoman.
Farmers still waiting to receive maps should submit their application before midnight on Monday (17 May) to avoid late application penalties.
“Farmers can then notify us of any amendments to land parcels or add new land parcels up until midnight on 1 June without penalty,” said the RPA spokeswoman.
“If they wish to make amendments to their application after 17 May they should do so in writing to the Sheffield RPA office.”
The address is: Rural Payments Agency, PO Box 300, Sheffield, S95 1AA.
To avoid complications when filling in forms, applicants should not copy pre-printed information into the blank boxes below each row of data.
If the pre-printed information is incorrect or needs to be changed, applicants should write the correct information in the blank boxes.
Farmers should remember that forms must be signed and care taken to send in the original form and not a photocopy.
“Some application forms have had pages removed from their SP5 or added pages from other forms,” said the RPA spokeswoman.
“Claims like this cannot always be processed and may be rejected.”
If a farmer requires a new form, or requires continuation sheets, they should contact the RPA. The form should retain all pages – even unused ones.
Each land parcel the applicant wishes to claim on must contain the correct pre-printed or handwritten information in Columns C2, C8 and C9.
Where a farmer has an outstanding mapping query on a land parcel and estimates the entries in C2 (field reference number), C3 (total field size) and/or C4 (maximum SPS eligible area), the RPA will amend to the correct area without penalty, and will not remove these lines of data from the farmer’s application.
This updates the guidance shown for columns C3 & C4 on page 86 of the SPS 2010 Handbook.