Rural Payments and Services

You will be aware that we are approaching the opening of the 2019 SAF window.

Following the closure of the 2018 National Basic Payment (NBPSS) loan scheme on 8 February, we are now close to finishing our final preparations ahead of making 2018 BPS, Greening and Young Farmer support scheme payments starting in March 2019.

As part of these preparations, we are finalising the settlement of the NBPSS 2018 loan scheme. As in previous years where we need to recover any outstanding loan or other overpayments we will adjust those affected customers’ 2018 BPS scheme payment.

There are also some regulatory requirements that will have a minor impact on the final stages of our payment processing.

We are now maintaining land data on our new Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) and we have cleansed the data including using the most up-to-date aerial photography and information available to us. We are currently reviewing 2015, 2016 and 2017 payments and payment rates applied in relation to entitlements for Basic Payment, Greening and Young Farmer schemes. We will be returning to the National Reserve the value of any BPS entitlements unused for two consecutive years (2016 and 2017).

This will result in some marginal changes for a proportion of customers. These customers will receive either a small top-up payment from March before the 2018 scheme payments begin, or if there is a marginal debt this will be factored into the calculation of your 2018 scheme payment.

Information about these changes will be included in payment letters that will start to appear in customer online communication logs from Thursday 7 March with the top-up payments being received 8 to 9 days later.

As announced last month, we have also established an LFASS2018 loan scheme and loan offer letters have been issued to over 10,600 LFASS2018 claimants. Early responses in March accepting these offers will enable a loan payment to be made as soon as possible.

As always, Area Offices stand ready to answer any queries you may have when payments start.