Farmers warned of more subsidy payout troubles

The bad omens are coming in from the south Humberside levels, where neighbours commonly share arable fields with no obvious physical barrier between them.

In 2006, Paul Hirst, who grows wheat near Swinefleet, was in the Yorkshire Post quoting bizarre results from computerisation of the old paper maps. A year ago, he and several dozen other locals, including senior NFU arable man Ian Backhouse, who farms locally, attended a meeting to try to thrash the problems out with the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).

They agreed to make joint claims for shared fields and divide the money up themselves.

The RPA's mapping division was setting out to update all its maps anyway, using updated software and the latest Ordnance Survey information on housing and road locations. And RPA agents took copious notes at Swinefleet. But now, Mr Hirst has got his 2010 maps and says they are still wrong.

Meanwhile, Mr Backhouse has received his claim form for the 2010-11 Single Farm Payment but no map to go with it.

He said this week: "If there is any discrepancy between the form and the Rural Land Register , the application is going to bounce as soon as they run the first stage of validation checks."

A spokeswoman for the RPA said: "Farmers know their land. Even if they do not have the maps, their claim forms include the up-to-date information on the register and they should be able to see if that is right."

But Mr Hirst said his claim form did not agree with his map. And Mr Backhouse said his form included references to land he could not recognise without a map. Both say they are not the only ones. And the deadline to get Single Farm Payment paid out this winter is May 17.

Any problems could have serious consequences. This is the year that some of the first agreements on Entry Level Stewardship – grants for foregoing some crop in the interest of the environment – are due for renewal. Natural England, which administers the ELS scheme, will not take farmers into it without agreed boundaries to work to. Some farmers have already decided not to bother, because it all looks too complicated.

If the mapping problems turn out to be widespread, they could also threaten the launch of Uplands ELS, the additional stewardship scheme which is supposed to replace Hill Farm Allowance.

Last week, the Yorkshire Post reported the European Commission had imposed a new fine on Defra for under-performance by the Rural Payments Agency. But Defra has since said the latest 'fine' was simply a formalisation of a bill already anticipated – and paid – for mistakes made in 2005-'06, and the RPA had come through its notorious teething problems.

This week, the RPA insisted the re-mapping exercise was going smoothly in the vast majority of cases and there was still time to sort out remaining errors before the May 17 deadline.

But Mr Backhouse said: "My impression is the RPA has set out do the impossible.

"It should have carried on with last year's maps until the job was done."