RPA recognises that this is a really challenging time for many rural businesses and they share some updates and reflect on what has been achieved in the website link below. The updates include:

  • the Sustainable Farming Incentive in 2022
  • Landscape Recovery and Local Nature Recovery
  • the Lump Sum Exit scheme

RPA have published their 5 Year Strategy which sets out their main objectives in delivering agricultural transition, meeting both customer expectations and policy needs, delivering environmental outcomes through a quality service and being an exemplar of the Civil Service’s Operational Delivery Profession working in practice.

RPA continued to deliver a range of services to rural businesses and developed and implemented new schemes and services. They launched the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pilot with over 2,500 expressions of interest and more than 900 applicants.

RPA has continued to issue payments to farming and rural businesses through schemes such as the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES). Over 100,000 eligible 2021 claims worth £1.8bn were paid – 92% by the end of December (2020: 89.5%). This represented 98.3% of BPS, 62.2% of CS revenue claims, and 64.6% of ES eligible claims.

They also received over 5,600 CS Capital grant claims worth £66.75m, which had helped to establish and maintain woodland and hedges.

RPA introduced a new approach for rural business that were due more than one 2021 scheme payment (combinations of BPS, CS, and ES). They wanted rural businesses to receive at least one payment in December, and over 98% did.

See: Rural Payments Agency update – April 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)