Ian Browne (Stafford)

For those of you who have started receiving 2015 BPS Claim Statements, can I urge you to check the areas mentioned within the claim against what you actually claimed last Spring. It would appear that a considerable number have got errors within them (over 35% of claims I have examined are incorrect).

One of the main errors would appear to be, where in the process of transposing of manual forms submitted to the digital system, some fields have lost their claim area i.e. they have nil eligible claim. This tends to be related to an “unknown” crop code being applied to the area or where the field is split into two areas. The consequence of this can be that the official claim submitted is therefore an “over claim” and, if above 2.00 ha, the penalty is doubled. This is applied to the BPS element or land claim part of the overall claim (70% of total) and not to the “Greening” part of the overall claim.

It is important to check the statement as if an error is not identified and highlighted to the RPA, it will carry forward into the 2016 year. If a farm has had an issue with over claims due to not having all their area included in the digital claim for 2015, this will mean that their Entitlements for 2016 will have been reduced by that amount. Last year all entitlements not used were confiscated, so errors on the forms have unintended consequences for the future!
One simple way to do a quick check is to see if the entitlement numbers on the digital application system for 2016 are the same as you had for 2015. If not then there is a likelihood of an error, unless a land parcel has been re-measured on the new mapping systems after an inspection.

Whatever happens please check statements when they arrive and start to prepare your 2016 application in good time!

For assistance with your BPS queries contact your local FCG office or Ian at ianbrowne@fcgagric.com