Rural Payments and Services

From Wednesday 11th August, farmers and crofters will receive an email or letter if a reduction has been made to their 2021 claim for Basic Payment Scheme, Greening, Young Farmer or Less Favoured Area Support Scheme, explaining why those reductions or exclusions were made.

Online customers will receive notification by email telling them that they have been sent a new communication to their communication log, which can be accessed by logging into your RP&S account. Offline customers will receive their letter by post.

Important to note, R&E letters are only issued to customers who have had a reduction and exclusion applied to their 2021 claim. Customers with no reductions will not receive the R&E letter.

Further guidance is on the Reductions and Penalties Guidance page

Background

The P1 R&E letter informs a business of any reductions and/or penalties that have been applied to any application(s) including details of the penalty calculation and eligibility for Greening or Young Farmer Payment

• The letters provide the detail behind the summary shown on the RP&S system. Separate R&E letters are produced for each scheme area, apart from LFASS which is included in the P1 R&E letter.

The R&E letter is only generated if one or more of the following has occurred as a result of SAF processing:

• Any adjustments have been applied to the SAF. This does not include data capture or obvious error adjustments.
• Any penalties have been applied to the customer for the current scheme year
• The customer has applied for Greening and is deemed not eligible
• The customer has applied for YFP and is deemed not eligible

• Receipt of the R&E letter does not always result in a reduction in payment. If a business holds less entitlements than the determined area for payment after any reduction or penalty is applied, there is no impact on the amount paid.
• The re-working of a SAF can often result in the R&E process running again. An example of this, is where there are updates made to land and that data is fed into RP&S from mapping updates. If this results in changes to the R&E findings then it may generate a new updated R&E letter.
• RPID would welcome and encourage customers, or their representatives, to contact their local Area Office to discuss any reductions or exclusions detailed in the R&E letter, that is thought to be incorrect, to allow RPID officials the opportunity to explain the detail and negate the requirement for any customer to use the appeal process.
• Should customers choose to appeal, they have 60 days from the date of the decision letter to raise an appeal request. For Cross Compliance the decision letter is the Inspection Findings Report which was issued following either the cross compliance or livestock inspection. If the 60 day application period has already passed customers can no longer submit an appeal.