RPA under scrutiny as Government announces review

The RPA, an executive arm of Defra, is responsible for paying over £2 billion of subsidies and environmental payments to 120,000 farmers in England every year.

But since its inception in 2001 it has been criticised for making late payments to farmers, overseeing a series of technical gaffes and sending the wrong maps to farmers.

In 2005 the Agency was responsible for one of the Government’s most serious delivery failures when errors lead to a delay in single payment delivery that cost farmers more than £40 million and taxpayers hundreds of millions.

Today, while the RPA continues to deal with the fall-out from the 2005 fiasco, it is also under fire for sending out-of-date maps to farmers as part of its Rural Land Register update.

The NFU said the Defra review should question whether the RPA should exist at all.

“The Review Board must not shrink from going back to the drawing board and asking fundamental questions about how CAP schemes - and livestock tracing - are delivered on the ground and whether the RPA is the appropriate vehicle,” said an NFU spokesman.

Nick Herbert, shadow Defra secretary, said the RPA had been ‘a complete disaster for the farming industry and public alike’ and needed a ‘total shake-up’.

He said: “What’s needed from the Government is a total shake-up to sort out this organisation once and for all and Ministers to accept political responsibility - which they have always refused to do - for the Agency’s serial failures under their administration.”

Katrina Williams, director general of Defra’s Food and Farming Group, will chair the RPA review. She said the investigation would be wide-ranging and would not rule anything out.

“We’re looking at all the possibilities and can’t rule anything out at the start of a review. This is all about making sure the RPA is in the best state going forward,” she said.

The review will consider the RPA’s financial and operational activities, as well as its management capability and will take account of previous critical findings from the National Audit Office and Parliamentary review.

Ms Williams said the exercise was “about ensuring the means of delivery are efficient, delivering a good service to the customer and getting taxpayer value-for-money”.

It will also ensure the RPA, which has 3,500 employees across the country, is ready to react to any changes to the Common Agricultural Policy in 2013.

Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, CLA president, said although ‘matters have got a lot better since Tony Cooper took over as chief executive’ the review had been ‘too long coming’.

“English farmers have been in the hands of one of the worst agencies in the UK and one that is among the slowest in the EU in making SPS payments,” he said.  

The review process, which is expected to run until March 2010, will give industry and farmers the opportunity to input their views over the future of the Agency.

The RPA assured industry that the review would not impact on its day-to-day services.

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