Not so much farming as the Krypton Factor
Not so much farming as the Krypton Factor
Guy Opperman, who is compiling a survey of examples
of needless agricultural form-filling and red tape, continues
his look at areas of particular concern. If you want to
nominate a particularly juicy example, contact him at the
address/fax/e-mail at the bottom of this article
The Agritachograph
At present to utilise any form of agricultural transport is to embark on a catalogue of form-filling and bureaucracy. When transporting livestock 3-4 forms are required to be filled out and available for inspection. This form filling is endemic throughout farming but it is a problem that is particularly evident with livestock transport.
There is, we believe, a potential solution – the Agritacho. This would be a single document that incorporates the tachograph required for HGV travel and has the capacity to record the further information required for the movement of livestock. There will immediately be a call that this is impossible to do but I fail to see why we cannot devise a document or form which deals with the daily maintenance checks, livestock in transit requirements, etc. as an attachment to the basic tachograph. The Ministry could produce a prototype form which can incorporate everything.
Sheep Annual Premium Scheme
I am grateful for the multitude of representations made by sheep farmers, but probably the best example of bureaucratic nonsense was passed on by Nigel Astbury of Townsends, the well known firm of Chartered surveyors.
The Sheep Annual premium scheme is one of MAFFs biggest disaster areas. When compared with the suckler cow premium scheme – itself no paperwork picnic – it is laughable.
For those of you not sheep farmers I will try to explain. Each producer has an ID number; the problems occur when you have a partnership, as is frequently the case. Each partner has a producer ID number under which the quota is held. When a partnership wishes to increase the number of quota rights held then the quota must be transferred in the same proportions as the existing quota already held to each partner. Confused? You soon will be.
For example: 3 partners (call them A1, A2 and A3) have 100 rights split 50/30/20. They want to buy 50 rights of quota from 4 partners (call them B1, B2, B3 and B4), all split 25% each. 5 quota forms have to be submitted with the maths as follows, presuming B sells to A: B1 to A1 – 12 rights; B2 to A1 – 13 rights; B3 to A2 – 12 rights; B4 to A2 – 3 rights; B4 to A3 – 10 rights
Who designed this ? This is supposed to be farming not the Krypton factor! Also, all this occurs, despite the fact that each partnership submits only 1 application on behalf of the partnership. The result is chaos as there are loads more forms, a certainty of errors occurring, and the consequence of lost premium.
Solution: Copy the Suckler cow premium scheme that has only 1 ID number, and therefore each quota transfer only ever has one transfer form, irrespective of the number of the partners on each side.
MAFFs response is that this issue has been repeatedly raised at both local and Whitehall level. However, its response is always the same whoever asks the question. If the man from MAFF understands the question he is likely to say that "it is being looked into". When I rang MAFF, the person I tried to speak to about this did not understand it themselves! They promised to get back to me – that was 3 months ago, and I am still waiting.
Guy Opperman can be contacted at 3 Paper Buildings, Temple, London EC4Y 7EU. Fax: 020-7353 6271.
E-mail:go@paper.co.uk