Back in September, there was an opportunity given by Commissioner Hogan to release an advance portion of the 2015 BPS payment, from 16 October, of up to 70% of the BPS claim value.
The pre-requisite for advancing payments was that all administrative checks had been completed on claims. Essentially these were claim payments that were waiting for 1 December to come to be able to be paid.
The NFU called on Defra to use the option of advanced payments.
But, as RPA CEO Mark Grimshaw confirmed in his 16 September EFRA Committee hearing, the RPA was not in a position to make payments before 1st December.
The fact of the matter is the RPA are still entering handwritten information from BP5 forms onto the new IT system and are validating (completing checks on individual claims) and verifying (cross population checks) claims, plus continuing down the list of farmers that need to be inspected.
There is still a lot to do and the NFU continues to monitor and challenge the RPA over its plans and progress to ensure as many payments are made as soon as possible within the seven month payment window.
So what is the picture around Europe? Well, 14 member states have taken up the option to make advance payments. To date it appears only the Irish and French have started to issue payments. A number of other member states are putting plans in place, but realistically they only have a month to make advance payments (before the Decemebr 1 window opens).
A number of member states, like the UK, are looking to make only full payments. The Irish have started to issue a 70% payment where the claims are cleared for payment, with a further instalment due from 1 December and the balance payment issued in 2016.