By unlocking the export potential China offers the pig industry, not to mention the red meat sector as a whole, we could gain entry into a marketplace which comprises a fifth of the world’s population.RPA claims all RLR maps have now been posted to farmers
THE Rural Payments Agency (RPA) should, by today, have finally returned all maps to farmers in England as part of its Rural Land Register (RLR) mapping project.
All maps had been posted to farmers, by Thursday (May 6), with the exception of ‘less than 18 oversize maps’, the agency said. These were due to be sent on Friday (May 7).
The announcement came after the agency had further angered farmers this week by failing to meet its promise to return all maps by the April. With the May 17 SPS application deadline looming, there are concerns affected farmers are running out time to fill in their SPS application forms, while many are having to do so with inaccurate mapping information.
By Wednesday, nearly 900 farmers in England had still not received updated maps. The agency said ‘technical printing issues’ had delayed the sending of 500 maps that were ready last week. Most of these were ‘interim maps’, which the agency has sent to 550 farmers in total whose confirmatory maps were not ready by the end of April.
These maps showed farmers the latest RLR information for their land, but may not have included all of the changes asked for. The agency said it would continue to issue confirmatory maps to these farmers ‘in due course’.
A further 380 ‘over-size’ (larger than A3) maps, which take longer to print, were also still outstanding on Wednesday. An agency spokeswoman said it had been contacting the individuals affected by telephone to offer to send an electronic copy of their maps to them.
The NFU criticised the RPA for again failing to meet its own deadlines with the mapping project.
In February, RPA officials guaranteed a deeply sceptical NFU council meeting that all maps would be returned by the end of February. With that deadline long past and many maps still to be sent out, officials then assured the council during a meeting last month that the maps would all be returned by the end of April, which again was not met.
The union’s SPS adviser Richard Wordsworth said there were ‘a lot of worried farmers out there’.
“The RPA have again missed their own target that we wanted them to meet. Farmers have been promised maps that they haven’t got and they are getting stressed because you need your maps to do the forms. It is just not where we wanted to be,” he said.
With 33,000 applications forms missing some pre-populated data adding to the confusion, the organisations called on Defra and the RPA to ‘look urgently at deferring the SPS deadlines’.
The agency spokeswoman said the deadlines of May 17, after which penalties will be applied, and June 11, after which claims will be rejected, were set out by the European Commission regulations and were the same for all member states.
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Readers' comments (7)
Sam | 11 May 2010 1:03 pm
Finally, thanls a bunch RPA, you've given us a week to complete a SP5 form with our new maps..... funnily enough which are completely inaccurate! What a lot of Tosh, you couldn't organise a party in a pub!
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Anonymous | 11 May 2010 5:29 pm
It would have been nicce to have actually recieved a claim form!! i phoned for the firt time on 27th March asking where it was. Since then I have phoned a further five times and each time I have been assured that 'it would be regenerated and sent out within five working days'. Last week I asked for blank forms instead as the pre-populated ones still had not come. I now have a massive task to get these filled in and senty in by the deadline, and no doubt I will be the one that gets penalised if it doesnt arrive in time. I am SO mad!!
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Anonymous | 11 May 2010 5:37 pm
May 11 , late afternoon,
Post as been
NO maps as yet,
We would all be bancrupt,if we ran our business,s like the rpa runs theirs.
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Big Al | 12 May 2010 8:51 am
The rpa may well say they have sent out all of the maps to farmers, but they are still, in the majority of cases I have seen (80) very wrong! Amendments made last October (under the 28 day "rule") have still not been made, fields are still missing, changes made by rpa inspectors after an inspection are not included and we are still having to add letters of explanation to SP5 submissions. Also the rpa seem to have completely ignored the number of farrmers who like to have their SP5's checked by a professional and if they are all waiting until maps have been received it is a job that cannot (almost) be done in time for the deadline. For the rpa to say that they have completetd their task is unbeleivable. Incompetence? On a truly massive scale!
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Ross Cherrington | 12 May 2010 10:58 am
Maps received but stll wrong . Well Done RPA
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Anonymous | 12 May 2010 8:13 pm
Our first inaccurate maps were corrected incorrectly and I am waiting for the latest 'corrections'. I don't hold out much hope of them either being accurate or here by the deadline so I've sent off SP5 with a letter. I did have a visit from a woman today to see which forms they needed to send me for the 2011 census and I had an email with a link to a 7 minute 47 second YouTube video telling me what to do with my soil protection forms! I know what I feel lilke doing with them but the government I'd do it to left office yesterday.
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Anonymous | 14 May 2010 12:59 pm
Two farms we mange have had only interim maps so far, both miles out, sent with covering letters making some pretty poor excuses. There aren't even any complicated changes! Despite some helpful soundbites I am still concerned this will all end up with us having severely reduced or delayed payments.
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