Managing the Rural Environment

The environment is an important issue for the CLA because all of our 38,000 members impact upon it in their day to day businesses and it impacts on them in varying ways as providers of fibre, food, fuel, game, habitats, landscapes, minerals, rural tourism, timber, land and buildings.

NEWS - CLA concerned about recovery of Organic Entry Level Stewardship conversion payments

The CLA has expressed its concern that Natural England has been instructed by European Auditors to review all OELS conversion payments made on agreements pre-dating 2007. Natural England says 1,600 agreements are being reviewed. It is estimated 50 of the agreements have been overpaid, in some instances up to £25,000.

The affected OELS agreement holders have either received double conversion payments on their eligible land or conversion payments on land not eligible for payments.

Natural England will telephone affected customers to advise them that they will be recovering overpayments or ‘topping’ up payments where applicants have not received their conversion aid. Affected customers will then receive a letter detailing the recovery and OELS applicants are able to appeal on the grounds of ‘force majeure’. All customers affected will have a named contact that they can discuss their individual circumstances with. Those affected by these changes should be contacted within the next fortnight.

The CLA have insisted that all affected agreements must be carefully reviewed by Natural England to determine whether the payment can be ‘written-off’ following the Rural Payments Agency(RPA)/European guidelines for overpayments. The CLA is also working hard to insist that all remittance advice slips sent from the RPA have agreement references on to enable land managers to correctly assign the right payments to the right agreement.

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