Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the reasons are for late payments being made under the Basic Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency; and how many farmers have received late payments to date.

George Eustice

The payment window for the 2015 Basic Payment Scheme runs from 1 December 2015 to 30 June 2016. While in recent years, the RPA has been able to make a higher proportion of payments earlier in the payment window, the new CAP is very complex and has created new administrative burdens for the RPA.

As of 2 March 2016 some 71,700 claimants, representing over 82% of all eligible claims, have received their payments, bringing the total paid to date for the 2015 scheme to £1.13 billion.