The Rural Payments
Agency (RPA) paid 93.4% of
Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) claims during December,
the best performance in the first month of the payment
window since the scheme started in 2015.
Payments during December were made to 78,787 of eligible
claimants and were worth more than £1.57 billion in total.
They included a range of 2018 BPS claim types and
sizes.
RPA Chief
Executive Paul Caldwell said:
We fully appreciate how critical BPS payments are to
farmers and their businesses. We have increased efforts
to pay more people as early as possible
and RPA teams have now
landed more than £1.5 billion into farmers’ bank
accounts. I’m very grateful to them for all their work so
far.
We know there is more to do and that some farmers are
still waiting for payments. We have written to everyone
we were not able to pay in December and will continue to
keep people up-to-date.
All farmers should make sure the RPA has their up-to-date
bank account details. Once a payment has been made a
remittance advice is sent in the post, confirming the
amount paid. A claim statement will also be sent to explain
how payments have been worked out.
The RPA is on track to
complete payments significantly ahead of the June 2019
deadline. Those claimants who have not been paid by the end
of March will receive a bridging payment worth 75% of the
value of their claim.
More information on BPS 2018, including
scheme rules and details of how payments are calculated, is
available at https://www.gov.uk/rpa/bps2018.
