Rural Payments Agency

History

The RPA was created on 16 October 2001 from the amalgamation of the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce and the Defra Paying Agency as a single paying agency for most Common Agricultural Policy schemes in England and certain schemes throughout the whole of the UK.

In 2003 the British Cattle Movement Service, which manages the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) for the whole of Great Britain, was amalgamated into the RPA. It maintains a register of births, deaths and movements of cattle to be used for animal health purposes; issues cattle passports; and records where individual cattle are, as well as operating a dedicated helpline. It handles around 20 million transactions per year, the majority recorded online.

Single Payment Scheme

The Rural Payments Agency experienced difficulties in implementing the EU's new Single Payment Scheme in 2005 and in effectively processing payments to farmers. A National Audit Office report published in October 2006, highlighted the key issues.

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published on 18 January 2006 a highly critical interim report into the agency's IT systems and activity.

On 15 March 2006 the Chief Executive Johnson McNeil was sacked when a deadline of 14 February for calculating Single Payment Scheme entitlements was missed. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060626140605/http://www.daelnet.co.uk:80/countrynews/country_news_16032006_6.cfm |archive-date=26 June 2006

Further, on 12 June 2006 the RPA confirmed that an internal inquiry was under way into "outrageous behaviour" in the agency office in Newcastle.

Following a series of senior management changes during the mid to late 2000s, Mark Grimshaw took over as Chief Executive in January 2011 and established a new Executive leadership team.

The agency published a new Five Year Plan in February 2012. For the 2011 Single Payment Scheme, RPA recorded its best ever performance, paying more than 95% of the 2011 fund to 96% of claimants by the first week of March 2012.

The agency further continued to improve its performance and in his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference on 3 January 2013, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, announced RPA had paid out more than £1.4 billion to 97,000 farmers by the end of December 2012. It actually achieved its target for December 2012 on the first banking day of the month.

The Single Payment Scheme was replaced with the Basic Payment Scheme in 2015.

Offices

RPA has six main offices which are all located in England. The head office is in Reading, and its other major offices are in Carlisle, Exeter, Newcastle upon Tyne, York and Workington.

References

References

1. "About us". UK Government.
2. (2 February 2016). "BPS 2016 – Detailed guidance". UK Government.
3. "British Cattle Movement Service". UK Government.
4. (23 September 2016). "Register land with the Rural Land Register". UK Government.
5. (15 July 2014). "Rural Payments Agency Business Plan 2014 to 2015". UK Government.
6. "The Rural Payments Agency - About RPA".
7. Rohrer, Finlo. (12 November 2008). "Will we eat wonky fruit and veg?". BBC News.
8. (2 February 2016). "BCMS About Us". UK Government.
9. (18 October 2006). "The delays in administering the 2005 Single Payment Scheme in England – National Audit Office". Nao.org.uk.
10. The Committee Office, House of Commons. (24 January 2006). "House of Commons – Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Fifth Report". Parliament of the United Kingdom.
11. (27 March 2006). "Tories urge farm minister to quit". BBC.
12. (13 June 2006). "Downfall of the naked civil servant". [[Metro (British newspaper).
13. (20 February 2013). "Publications – GOV.UK".
14. "Archived copy".
15. (24 February 2015). "Basic Payment Scheme (BPS)". UK Government.