Report criticises late payments to farmers (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Report criticises late payments to farmers

4:06pm Tuesday 15th December 2009 in

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LOCAL farmers who were hit in the pocket by late delivery of Single Farm Payments three years ago should receive an apology and compensation, a new report has claimed.

Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has slammed the ‘’maladministration” by Rural Payments Agency for its handling of the scheme when it was first introduced in 2005.

Reacting to the publication, shadow Defra secretary Tim Farron said: “The RPA has had a good year so far with making payments, but it has been a failing organisation for a number of years. Any quango is only as good as the government that operates it.”

The Westmorland and Lonsdale MP added: “It was absolutely appalling in 2005 and hundreds of farmers in South Lakeland lost out. They cam to me because they were going to go bankrupt, or were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There were several family breakdowns at that time because of the long delay.

“The RPA isn’t the icing on the cake for a lavish lifestyle - it pays the bills.”

In the report, entitled: ‘Cold Comfort: the administration of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency’, Ms Abraham said: “RPA continued to tell farmers that it would keeps its payment timetable, when it knew, or should have known, that the timetable was increasingly unrealistic.

“Important principles are at stake here. My view is that an appropriate remedy should be forthcoming where injustice has been suffered as a consequence of maladministration by a public body.

The SPS replaced the previous production-based system of farm subsidy within the European Union. Farmers in England receive about £1.6 billion a year under the scheme.