Single Payment Scheme update

ENTITLEMENT CORRECTION AND DEBT & DATA PROJECT UPDATE

Claire Collyer, CLA conservation officer, writes:

There are approximately 8000 SPS claims that are within the Entitlement Correction project and are likely to have affected 2010 payments. It is highly unlikely that any of these cases will receive their SPS payment in December.

The RPA is continuing with the ongoing testing of entitlement correction cases through their test environment. These are progressing well with the majority of cases (including difficult ones) progressing through correctly. More fixes may be applied to the RPA computer system this weekend which if successful will allow another 600 cases to progress to the test environment.

Jim Paice has told the RPA that he is looking for them to produce a plan that means all cases are resolved and will not be happy with 90-95 percent. As a result the RPA are looking to build better links between their Debt and Data project (linked to entitlement correction) and 2010 SPS claim processing. The aim is for a proposal to be developed that highlights the current issues being worked upon, the impacts these are causing on the farmer and the RPA, potential solutions and the risks associated with them (e.g. disallowance) etc.

The RPA are working on the following:

• Continuing the entitlement correction effort
• Emphasis on getting processes right and avoiding short-cuts i.e. accuracy as opposed to speed.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The European Court of Auditors will comment on the CAP budget and will highlight problems in the UK specifically concerning data corruption. They have taken a dim view on the RPA being unable to provide exact number of cases and so have calculated an error rate that is far in excess of the actual problem.

2010 PAYMENTS UPDATE

The RPA have a target to pay 85 percent of customers by the end of December. The target is challenging due to the high number of cases that will be unable to receive a payment in this time such as the Entitlement Correction cases. The RPA are confident however that they are on track to hit this target. Currently approximately 75 percent of claims have been fully validated and are ready for payment. The RPA will start making payments from the 1 December and it is likely that there will be paid in a 'spread pattern' rather than an early spike as seen last year. The RPA will write to customers in December if they are unlikely to receive their payment in December.

To date the RPA are processing 2442 eligible claims for the Uplands Transitional Payment (UTP) however more claims may come to light as the RPA continues with its data cleansing exercise. (UTP applications have to be manually detected).

The RPA have confirmed that entitlement statements will be available through SPS Online by the 8 December (subject to an exemption being agreed by the Cabinet Office). Paper statements will be sent out between 17 December and 10 January in several dispatches. Some customers will not get an entitlement statement if the value or number of entitlement is being reviewed. This is a good indication that members who are unable to access their entitlement statements are unlikely to receive their 2010 SPS payment in December.

There are 8 cases where new Fruit and Vegetable Entitlements have not yet been processed.

• 6 of these are delayed due to entitlement correction and the RPA will be contacting them next week.
• 1 is awaiting RLR validation
• 1 is a dual-claim case

It is important that you are aware that the sugar value of entitlements has reduced significantly this year which will result in smaller payments.

2009 PAYMENTS UPDATE

There are 113 cases yet to receive any of their 2009 SPS payment:

• 70 are probate cases

Of the remaining 43:

• 50 percent are not responding to questions from the RPA
• A change in business details means the claim cannot be paid e.g. disputes between previous business partners mean that the RPA are unsure as to whom is the claimant
• 5 cases are awaiting action from the RPA

2009 top-ups

• 976 cases were identified as needing a top-up payment
• 774 cases have been paid
• 135 cases are still being processed due to IT problems
• 7 will not be paid because they are under £10
• 60 cases are complex

Some 2005-08 top-up payments have been made at the same time.

The outstanding top-up payments will be made over the next couple of months. This is because they are labour intensive and must be balanced alongside the 2010 payments

I am aware of many of the entitlement correction cases that the CLA regional teams are working on, however if you are working on any that you don't think I am aware of please let me know so that I can update my list.

SPS ONLINE

The RPA has seen an increase in the take-up for SPS online. They are contacting agents to encourage them to use SPS online. SPS online applications are progressing through validation well and are ahead of the paper forms.

Action required: The RPA have asked the Technical Stakeholder Group for feedback on a proposal. They are proposing that anyone who successfully applied for SPS 2010 through the online system (i.e. they got a confirmatory email to say their application had been received) should not get a paper SP5 application form in 2011 in an effort to cut costs. However SPS applicants could request a paper form should they desire one. This is only a proposal at the moment but I would appreciate it if you could ask any members who have used SPS online what they would think of this proposal?

UPDATE ON RLE1 IMPROVEMENT PROJECT

The RPA is running a project to look at improving the way RLE1 forms are used and processed.

To date they have managed to agree that blank forms will be made available through the CSC call centre which is particularly beneficial to CLA professional members. It is not possible for blank forms to be used just for transferring entitlements (i.e. blank forms can be used for land and entitlement transfers but not for entitlement only transfers). 200 hundred blank RLE1 forms were sent last week so it seems to be working well. It is important to make members aware that they need to tell the RPA's Customer Service Centre if they only want one set of RLE1 guidance booklets otherwise the CSC will issue a guidance booklet with each blank form.

In addition the RPA are now offering a four week grace period for people to get empowered once they've submitted the RLE1 form. This is good news as a large number of forms were rejected last year because those signing the forms did not have the correct empowerment and resulted in some transfers not going through.

The RPA is also revising the accompanying guidance for RLE1 forms as well as developing a checklist to try and stop the common mistakes made by applicants. They have also started sending confirmatory letters to farmers when entitlement transfers have been successfully completed.

MULTI-PACKING AGENT GUIDANCE

At present there are 800 agents who represent 20,000 SPS applicants. Each year the RPA sends these agents 20,000 copies of the various guidance booklets and this leads to frustration since agents only require one copy to do their job.

Many of the representatives on the technical stakeholder panel have raised concerns that cost savings could be made if agents weren't sent multiple copies of the SPS handbook. The RPA agreed to look into this and found that if multiple booklets weren't sent to agents this would save £15,000. The savings would only be made for one year because the next SPS handbook will cover 2011 & 2012. However the RPA would need to update their registration system on their computer system in order to be able to say which SBI is related to which agent. In addition the single copies of the handbook would all need to be 'packed' by hand rather than automatically since there is not an automated route that the RPA can use. This would cost £45,000. As a result the RPA will continue to send multiple copies of the handbook to agents with the exception of those who applied through SPS online last year who may be sent only one copy.

RLR UPDATE

The RPA are continuing to work through the RLR workstack and are making good progress and are currently running ahead of their forecasts. They are receiving approximately 150 RLE1s per week.

Progress has slowed over the last week due to large inspection cases coming in. In addition some of the InfoTech digitisers have left and not been replaced.

The RPA have confirmed to stakeholders that any changes that farmers wish to make to their RLR maps that are submitted by Christmas on an RLE1 form should be reflected on pre-populated SPS forms. However it is probably best to advise members to get any changes they wish to have made into the system now.

CROSS COMPLIANCE UPDATE

The RPA have confirmed the process for cross compliance surrounding cattle keepership as follows:

Farmer A moves cattle to a building that they are leasing from Farmer B (who is not a cattle keeper). Farmer A notifies BCMS of the movement off their holding but does not have a link on Farmers B site so does not notify the movement of the cattle onto farmer B's property. Farmer B is not required to notify BCMS of the movement onto their holding because they are not the registered keeper (and will not know the passport numbers). This means farmer B cannot be responsible for the cattle movements of farmer A onto his holding.

The RPA may become the Competent Authority (rather than the Environment Agency) relating to SMR 2-4 from as early as 2011.

The revised Habitat and Landscapes booklet will be published at the same time as the Cross Compliance guide.

The next stakeholder meeting is: 2 December 2010.