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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Rural Payments Agency is taking to improve the (a) usability and (b) reliability of its online systems.

The Rural Payments Agency is supporting Defra’s Digital Data Technology Services team, the Livestock Improvement Transformation Programme, and the Farming & Countryside Programme on a suite of work to upgrade, improve and replace IT systems.

The Rural Payments Service currently supports tens of thousands of customers, handling their agreements and payments for land-based schemes.

We continue to look for opportunities to improve in advance of any new IT replacing it. Recent examples include upgrade of the infrastructure underpinning the Rural Payments Service to improve system performance and the introduction of an online service for customers to amend their bank details.