Farmers 'dismayed' over more payment delays

The National Farmers' Union 100-strong national council called in the RPA's chief operations officer, Steve Pearce, for questioning about the disaster-prone agency's attempt to update all the farm maps on its computerised database over the past year.

An NFU summary of Tuesday's meeting said Mr Pearce had been left in no doubt about farmers' frustrations at the ... "man-made bureaucratic incompetence that has seen members left without any maps, inaccurate mapping, incomplete paperwork or tied in knots trying to get through the labyrinth of the RPA call centre".

The RPA is said to have admitted 33,000 out of 107,000 English farmers and growers still had "some missing data" in their farm support grant packs. May 17 is the deadline for farmers to get their applications in and June 1 the deadline for getting them amended and accepted.

NFU President Peter Kendall said: "I am absolutely amazed that despite warning the RPA of the problems we anticipated with mapping, way back in the summer last year, that we are where we are today.

"I want assurances from the RPA that they have a contingency plan in place to avoid the car crash that is heading our way."

This was the third time in a year the RPA had been called to address the NFU Council over concerns over the re-mapping exercise.

Last month, the Yorkshire Post revealed problems were still arising - particularly in arable areas such as the Humberhead Levels, where farm boundaries are often invisible and inspectors struggle to check maps against reality.

Residents in the Swinefleet area had been trying and failing for a year to come to an agreement with the RPA over their maps, including Ian Backhouse, chairman of the NFU's national combinable crops board.

The RPA said it was still confident of getting everything straight before this year's deadlines but Mr Backhouse attended Tuesday's meeting and claimed the 33,000 cases of missing information were mainly about mapping problems.

Last night, the RPA said most involved trivial omissions of data which appeared to have changed – and which farmers could easily fill in.