We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.RPA admits to mapping delays
THE Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has admitted that over 6,000 farmers in England are still to receive completed Rural Land Registry maps.
The agency’s chief operating officer Steve Pearce admitted that it was taking ‘significantly longer’ than anticipated to complete the remapping process.
When agency executives appeared before the NFU council towards the end of 2009, they confidently predicted all corrected maps would have been returned by the end of February.
Yet addressing the council today (Tuesday, April 20) Mr Pearce admitted 4,500 confirmatory maps were still to be returned to farmers. A further 1,200 farmers who had been subject to remote sensing checks are still to receive their maps, in addition to 500 farmers who had received physical checks.
The agency is planning to send the outstanding maps to farmers by May 1 and is due to send out a ‘big chunk’ of maps this week.
Mr Pearce said he understood the concerns felt by farmers, particularly regarding their 2010 SPS applications.
But he told the council he wanted to ‘allay their concerns’, insisting the issues were being addressed and that progress was being made. He pledged the RPA would seek to help farmers hit by the mapping problem.
NFU council members expressed anger at the situation. John Charles-Jones, from Nottingham, described the mapping process as a ‘sheer fiasco’ and accused the RPA of being ‘incompetent, unco-ordinated muppets’.
“It is just an absolute unbelievable mess you have got yourself in. Farmers are absolutely terrified of getting their SPS claims wrong,” he said.
Lincolnshire council member, Jonathan Brant, said some farmers were being driven towards suicide because of the fiasco. “It is not just about profit and loss. It is a matter of life and death in some cases,” he said.
The RPA’s Simon Lunnis also admitted that 33,000 SPS 2010 application forms would have data missing in one or two columns.
Readers' comments (9)
Nick Clayton | 20 April 2010 12:26 pm
A typical example of the "High Standards" Labour seem to think are acceptable, and a graphic illustration of Gordon Brown's "Society that is fair to all"
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Anonymous | 20 April 2010 1:53 pm
I agree with Nick
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K O Philippson | 20 April 2010 2:44 pm
We returned our maps with corrections in October and we sent the exact same maps back in March. We immediately emailed the RPA explaining that not ONE correction had been incorporated. We were told that they apologized and agreed and the maps would be with us in 14 days, ie by 7 April. We are still waiting......
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Anonymous | 20 April 2010 4:05 pm
We returned our maps about 8 months ago and have not received any further information from the RLR. I seem to remember that they gave us 30 days to send the information back to them in one of our busiest times on the farm.
I know the new maps are going to be wrong because I have had the ELS scheme contact me because they say the area in some fields under the ELS scheme have changed and therefore the payments that have been made on the old set of RLR maps will have to be updated. Will this mean that payments will also be adjusted?
The 2nd reason why I know the maps will be wrong again is that the SPS form has been populated on the updated maps and the sizes do not match what I sent in.
The RPA do seem to have taken a sensible view on the situation, as long as you explain in a covering letter, about which area you are using (I shall use last years figures until this years figures have been agreed).
One point that the RPA also made is that if your acreage has been increased on the new maps, you will not be able to claim it unless you buy more entitlements to cover the increased area. Obviously you cannot do this this year because we are already beyond the deadline for submitting RLE 1 forms. Perhaps the maps have been delayed for a purpose after all.
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Anonymous | 20 April 2010 4:42 pm
We dairy farmers have to deliver on time and of the right standard every day of the year or we do not get paid. The RPA and their Government managers do not understand what having to deliver means . If there income depended on it they would soon learn aand not leave there in tray when Friday night or 5 oclock arrives. these people have never had to make anything of any value to anyone else and justify being paid for it
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Anonymous | 20 April 2010 4:50 pm
RPA internally knew as early as September that they would be extremely unlikely to have RLR maps in place for this years SPS. Many internal people warned senior managers, but they decided to ignore the warnings or chose to fool the customers and NFU. You see they will do anything to survive a bit longer and get paid their bonuses, and as long as we have a government that is tolerant of this type of failure we will have a disaster known as RPA.
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Tom Lonsdale | 21 April 2010 11:36 am
John Charles-Jones' description of RPA as "incompetent, unco-ordinated muppets" is incomplete: add 'self-righteous bullies'. My wife and I received a penalty 2% deduction of our SFP because we forgot to sign the otherwise fully completed application form and, by the time it was returned to us and resubmitted, we were two days over the deadline. Their justification was that the penalty rules have no room for discretion and yet we hear every day of them breaking their own rules themseves whilst we have no means of penalising them despite measurable cost consequences of their ineptitude.
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John Charles-Jones | 21 April 2010 12:28 pm
Tom.
(Only part of my comments were reported...!).
Did you appeal? If not, it may still not be too late.
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George Varden | 22 April 2010 6:45 pm
We are still waiting for our revised maps....and last year's SPS payment.... and this year's SPS forms!!
If we, as farmers, are late by a single day we lose a significant proportion of our earnings.
How many individuals at the RPA wake up thinking "I missed yesterday's deadline, that's a 2% cut in my annual wage"?
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