Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many people who made a claim to the Basic Payment Scheme in (a) 2015 and (b) 2016 are yet to receive a payment for either claim.
As at the 20 December, in addition to claims which the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) cannot pay due to legal reasons such as probate, all but 6 claimants had received a payment for BPS 2015. In addition the RPA is investigating new queries it has received.
For BPS 2016, the RPA announced that over 68,200 farmers in England have now received a 2016 Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payment. The payments to some 79% of eligible claimants, worth £1.14 billion, include a range of 2016 BPS claim types and sizes, including claimants under the young farmer scheme, those inspected and farmers with common land.