Rural Payments Agency: Staff

(asked on 23rd June 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many extra staff have been (a) hired and (b) reassigned from other roles in the Rural Payments Agency to manage applications for the Basic Payment Scheme in 2014-15.


Answered by
George Eustice Portrait
George Eustice
This question was answered on 1st July 2015

The Rural Payments Agency uses a flexible resourcing approach, moving people onto different activities according to business need:

(a) The RPA have not hired any additional people to manage Basic Payment Scheme applications so far, but are in the process of taking on 68 agency temps who will start in the next two weeks. During May and June there were approximately 150 people from across the Defra, its agencies and NDPBs who were trained to work in Drop in Centres with RPA staff to cover the extended opening times.

(b) During April and May, RPA re-deployed approximately 50 people from outside the Operations directorate onto Basic Payment Scheme activities (including the Helpline and in Drop in Centres). During June approximately 80 people from outside of Operations have been deployed onto Basic Payment Scheme activities (including carrying out basic checks). These people will shortly be moving onto the next phases of data capture.

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