Hill farmers 'face financial woe' after mapping errors

ERRORS in the Rural Payment Agency’s (RPA) remapping of farms has sparked fears that payments to as many as 80 per cent of upper dale farmers may be delayed.

The problem is believed to have been caused when the RPA outsourced the management of the Rural Land Registry. It is crucial because the funding given to sustain hill farmers depend on the information about the size of their farm.

Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services (Utass) has received 179 email notifications of changes to its members’ land details. The charity has 223 members, so about 80 per cent are affected.

Utass project manager Diane Spark said: “The RPA in their wisdom have decided to remap all of the farms. All of the maps have gone back with all of the same errors from three or four years ago, and some new errors.

“The RPA never get held to account for their errors – it all comes back to the farmers.”

Farmers are furious because it has taken years to get the correct details onto the RPA system. A new IT system used to manage the Single Payment Scheme, a significant subsidy, was not able to import all of the data that had been carefully corrected.

Utass farm liaison worker Richard Betton said: “Previous inaccuracies that had been corrected years before reappeared and even whole fields disappeared.

“Since 2015 we have been struggling to correct the data on the Rural Land Registry with many online applications having to be accompanied by paper forms as well as paper continuation booklets to include the land parcels that had disappeared.

“There is concern that 2017 payments will be delayed if claims have to be revalidated against the latest iteration of the Rural Land Registry. It is also the time of year when Environmental Stewardship agreements have to be validated. There is also real concern that if the information is not corrected quickly it will make claiming next May for the 2018 payment an unnecessarily complicated and laborious process.

“Even if we complete all the required forms to make the corrections, the RPA may not have the resource to process them and they will be stockpiled. Given the current state of profitability of the farming industry payment delays again this year would cause serious anxiety and financial hardship.”

The RPA confirmed that mapping updates were ongoing and about 800,000 parcels of land were being updated as part of the process.

A spokesperson said: “As required by the European Commission, we update our digital land maps throughout the year. Updates are based on the latest information from farm inspections, aerial photography and the Ordnance Survey, as well as following requests for changes from applicants.

“Maps can be checked online using the Rural Payments Service. Information on how to tell RPA about changes to mapping can be found on gov.uk.”