Farming couple fear loss of £35,000 CS payment

A missing email from the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) could cost one farming couple more than £35,000 in lost environmental scheme support.

Jane and Derek Durrant run a 200ha arable and suckler beef farm near Uckfield in East Sussex.

They have been keen proponents of environmental schemes and applied successfully for new options under a Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier agreement for 2022.

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The options were approved by the RPA. But in mid-November Mrs Durrant received an email stating that she would not receive any of the £35,450 CS payment due.

The reason given was that she had not sent in a claim form.

Although Mrs Durrant admitted she had not done so, she explained that she was unaware of the need to make a claim as well as the application in the same year.

No reminders

She should have received reminders from the RPA to make the claim, but these never arrived.

Mrs Durrant said she believed the application form constituted the claim form.

All of the information supplied in the application would simply be repeated on a claim form for year one, which would be a duplication and waste of time, she said.

But the RPA has stuck to its guns, insisting that requiring farmers to submit a claim form “is a crucial element of the control framework, required to protect taxpayers’ money”.

Financial blow

The lack of the £35,000 payment has been a huge blow to the Durrants’ business because of the investment already made for the various CS options.

Mrs Durrant spent hours last summer measuring the new option areas for different wildflower, bird food and legume plots on the least productive parts of the farm. 

“The expenses we incurred in diesel and buying seed, plus the lost revenue from taking such a large area out of arable production, is not something that we can afford to carry without our CS payment,” she said.

An RPA spokesman said the agency recognised the importance of such payments to the livelihood of farmers.

“But our application guidance is clear on what steps farmers must take to apply for the Countryside Stewardship scheme – and we do provide prompts for applicants to help them meet deadlines.

“We consider situations on a case-by-case basis, and where there are extenuating circumstances we will consider what flexibility we can apply.”

Paperwork

With growing concern over the business’ finances, Mrs Durrant turned to help from the Farming Community Network (FCN).

“An adviser confirmed we should have received the email reminders from the RPA to make the claim,” she said.

“But we didn’t receive a single one. I am hot on paperwork and know when an email has not arrived. I have been through all of my inboxes over and over and there is nothing there.

“There has clearly been a breakdown in communication and for the sake of a missing email, our farming operation is going to suffer hugely,” she said.