Farmers’ valuable time wasted after BPS maps botch
© Cultura/Rex/Shutterstock Farmers are having to spend valuable time re-adding features on their BPS maps because the RPA has removed them.
Land agents say that the problems with incorrect mapping are worse than usual this year, with one agent estimating that it is adding a third to the time spent on applications.
The most common issues include permanent ineligible features like ditches or tracks being incorrectly removed, or fields being merged together – sometimes with a neighbour’s.
See also: Applications open for next round of Countryside Stewardship
The RPA must check 5% of England’s farmland every year for eligibility and it is believed that areas where satellite imagery has been used – either this year or last – are facing the most problems.
With six weeks to go before the 2017 application deadline on 15 May, farmers and agents say the issues are adding to workload.
Farmers speak out
Angus Gowthorpe, a beef and arable farmer in Yorkshire, said the RPA had incorrectly added about 10 fields to his claim – these belonged to neighbours and totalled an estimated 150 acres.
“Despite the fact we haven’t changed our field boundaries for getting on 10 years, somehow they got in a pickle,” he said.
Farmers Weekly has also spoken to a large estate in East Anglia where the RPA has removed a significant number of the estate’s one hundred-plus ditches.
The farm manager estimates that last year’s application took him four weeks of solid work to update and get accurate.
Steps to correct your BPS claims
Andrew Jenkinson at Robinson & Hall advises how farmers should sort out their mapping issues:
1. Correct ineligible features first in the land use tables so that the difference between the total field size and eligible area is all accounted for by permanent ineligible feature
2. Then correct the fallow features or any other small cropping such as game covers
3. Update main crops last
Agents said the mapping issues were also adding to payment delays.
A farmer in an eastern county was paid his 2016 claim last week, but it was nearly £10,000 short. His agent believes this was caused by the RPA adding fields from his neighbour without instruction, which caused him to be penalised for overclaiming.
The application will probably have to be submitted before the RPA resolves the eligible area issue and will likely mean a delayed payment again this year.
Hugh Townsend, at Townsend Chartered Surveyors in Exeter, even said he believed some of the data previously submitted using RLE1 forms to the RPA has been lost.
“This means that, where farmers have previously made notional deductions to the eligible area of a field, or have marked features that are not visible from satellites, the information has been lost and must subsequently be re-submitted to the RPA.”
Richard Wordsworth, senior advisor on BPS at the NFU, said he is seeing an increasing level of concern from members on the quality of mapping data.
The RPA is doing a lot of work on remapping, he said, particularly in parts of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Kent. Since these are arable areas where boundaries are less easy to see from aerial imagery, this might explain some of the issues, he said.
“If you haven’t started your claim yet, start sooner rather than later and if an agent does it for you, work with them to review the data so they can get it through in time.”
Time wasted
Andrew Jenkinson, partner at Robinson & Hall’s Bedford office, said the RPA has started to send out letters asking farmers to confirm the removal of land in historical claims.
Mr Jenkinson said he has received 14-16 such letters between Monday and Wednesday this week.
“It’s taking more of our time when we’ve got additional work with mapping. I could understand if they were all up to date with 2015-16 claims, but they are now adding further hours of work when some farmers are still waiting for payments.”
George Badger, farming consultant at Strutt & Parker’s Cambridge office, said he has also received such letters.
“The first letter listed some genuine transfers out for sales, but also included some parcels that had disappeared as a result of an ELS inspection which merged two parcels together.
“The second was again a parcel that no longer exists because the RPA remapped it and merged two together.
“The third was a parcel that hadn’t even been removed off the RLR and is still on the client’s RP online system.”
The RPA said an increase in mapping queries is normally seen during the BPS application window.
A spokesperson said: “Our land maps are based on the latest information from the Ordnance Survey, as well as aerial photography and are updated throughout the year following farm inspections and information from applicants.”
Agents advised farmers to carefully check their maps and claim areas for 2017 and to cross reference with data sent to them by the RPA for previous claims.