In 2023, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) paid over £1.2 billion into farmers’ bank accounts through the Countryside Stewardship, Environmental Stewardship and Basic Payment schemes.
The RPA paid out over 91,000 eligible claims under the schemes.
By the end of 2023, the RPA also reported that over 97% of applicants had received their balance Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payment.
Farmers with a live Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreement in place by the end of last year also received an accelerated payment worth 25% of the annual value of their agreement in the first month of their agreement.
The RPA said this was done in response to farmers’ concerns with cashflow.
SFI remains open for applications and farmers are being encouraged to apply via the UK government’s website.
Just under 2,200 rural businesses received these accelerated payments by the end of 2023 – a total of around £8 million was paid out.
Support through cashflow
As 2024 progresses, the RPA said it will strive to ensure consistent cashflow to support agriculture businesses as BPS is replaced with delinked payments.
The RPA has received over 9,000 applications for the latest round of SFI so far, with over 5,000 agreement offers accepted and started.
RPA chief executive Paul Caldwell said: “Our farmers are the heartbeat of the nation’s rural economy, and the RPA has remained focussed on supporting them by processing applications quickly, improving cashflow through accelerated payments and making improvements to our application processes.
“But our work does not stop here and, as we go into 2024, we want to build on what we have already achieved by continuing to work closely with farmers, understand their needs and encourage them to join our environmental land management schemes.”
The RPA has made a number of improvements over the past year in a bid to help make the application process for schemes quicker and more straightforward for farmers.
This includes the launch of ‘Rural Land Changes’, a new service for farmers and land managers to update their maps digitally rather than via a paper RLE1 form.
