RPA beats latest Single Payment target

OVER 98,000 farmers in England have now received a full Single Payment, latest Rural Payments Agency figures revealed today (Thursday 25).

The RPA has now met the second of its formal targets of making 90 per cent of payments, by value, by the end of March 2010.

Just over 9,000 farmers are still without their payment.

Of these, the RPA says 2,000 have been processed and resulted in no payment being due.

Processing continues on the remaining 7,500 claims where the RPA is ‘working to finalise these as quickly as possible’.

In total the RPA pays out £1.86 billion to an estimated total claimant population of 107,500.

Speaking at the NFU conference on Tuesday (February 22) Defra Secretary Hilary Benn said the Agency’s operations had improved markedly for SPS 2009.

“You told me about the problems at the RPA. I did something about it and in December I had a completely new experience – two emails from farmers saying ‘Thanks’ for the cheques that arrived in the first week of the payment window,” he said.

26 February 2010