The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has unveiled plans to create a more efficient and effective farm payments agency offering a fast, responsive and easy to access service to growers and other food producers.
The much-maligned agency now has a five-year plan which is designed to stabilise it during the months remaining of the existing European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) while specifying and procuring replacement systems to meet the demands of CAP 2013. “This is all to be achieved at best value for the taxpayer and without customer service issues or unexpected costs,” the agency said in a statement.
The plan is funded by DEFRA with an additional £21.8 million in the next financial year, and a further £19.1 million provisionally earmarked for the following two financial years.
Farming minister Jim Paice said: “The RPA’s historical problems have been well documented but the five-year-plan sets out a clear path to deal with that legacy and ensure the RPA provides a high level of service in the future..
“There have been significant improvements in the speed and accuracy of payments over the last year but there’s still much more to be done, and we’re building solid foundations to prepare for the considerable changes the RPA will face over the next five years.”
The ambitious plan means that in five years time, the RPA will have delivered a new system to implement the new CAP schemes effectively, be delivering more timely and accurate payments including a reduction in manual payments, debts and backlogs to near-zero levels. It also aims to have addressed the recommendations made in recent reviews and improved its reputation. All this while it delivers services at lower cost and with less overall resource, offering best value for money for taxpayers.
RPA chief executive Mark Grimshaw said: “There has been steady improvement in performance over the past year and real progress on turning RPA into a customer-focused agency. Costs have been reduced while customer satisfaction scores have increased and good progress has been made in tackling some of the legacy issues. We have also just announced record-breaking 2011 payment figures for the first month of the seven-month payment window. But there is still work to do, which is why we want to put an end to short-term fixes and workarounds with a new five-year strategy aimed at offering better service to customers and more value for money for the taxpayer.”
He said the agency will set out in more detail the expected costs and outputs in the year ahead in annual business plans, starting with the plan for 2012-13 due to be published in April.
