Stewardship Payments for 2018

WRXppp

Member
Location
North Yorks
I take it no one has had any of 2018 yet?
I got my 75% 2018 advance payment last November, was totally out of the blue and seeing the s***storm which was unfolding on these pages was actually quite embarrassing that mine had turned up, I did have a run in last spring with a team leader re 2017 payments after being given many different stories regarding payment timings from the poor sods on the coal face taking calls from desperate farmers!
Has everyone who has got the email read the paragraphs where you can ring them to tell them you don’t want the payment up to date and would prefer to wait for them to work out your true payment, can’t see that getting many calls, the way it is worded is also truly patronising in my opinion.
 

spin cycle

Member
Location
north norfolk
If they pay up, that’s all alright then.......til the next cockup.
It’s about trust.

i think they realise that...albeit to late....the way i read the press release everything is going to be paid then adjusted later if need be....it must be absolute chaos...grinding through mountains of paperwork...missing deadlines and then seeing more paperwork arriving

cauldwell says they want to rebuild trust...it's gonna take some doing
 

Guy Smith

Member
Location
Essex
The trouble is @Guy Smith there are no payment dates, so there is technically no such thing as 'late payments'. Despite the HLS handbook Third edition for agreements starting after Feb 2010 stating:

'you will receive a payment every 6 months from the start of your agreement. This will include payment for the ELS or OELS element of your agreement. Each six-monthly payment will be half of your annual management payment for that year, and will be made automatically, apart from the final payment.'

Of course, we all know that the handbook forms an integral part of the agreement and that any variation to the agreement can only be made by Natural England 'in line with European Law and in other exceptional circumstances'

If we are governed by such clear rules and yet late payments cannot be challenged, it leaves us with a very one sided set of rules that a lot of us do not want to be party to.


You are right, the lack of actionable dates in agreements is a big problem.

We’ve had our legal panel firms looking at this for some time. They concluded that by spring 2019 those waiting for ELS/HLS work done in 2017 might have a case. Interestingly we instructed our LAS solicitors to help members bring such cases last week.

After this weeks RPA announcement hopefully this will no longer be needed but we haven’t stood the lawyers down just yet.

Going forward we will push for future agreements to have clear payment dates to give claimants legal rights of redress in the event of unreasonable delay in payment.

As indeed I said here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00060zp

Ten minutes in
 
You are right, the lack of actionable dates in agreements is a big problem.

We’ve had our legal panel firms looking at this for some time. They concluded that by spring 2019 those waiting for ELS/HLS work done in 2017 might have a case. Interestingly we instructed our LAS solicitors to help members bring such cases last week.

After this weeks RPA announcement hopefully this will no longer be needed but we haven’t stood the lawyers down just yet.

Going forward we will push for future agreements to have clear payment dates to give claimants legal rights of redress in the event of unreasonable delay in payment.

As indeed I said here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00060zp

Ten minutes in

Agreed but we should push for payments to be paid automatically in each year with the last year later if inspection is in the last year

There are 22000 farmers in the stewardship with the competitive element now defunct because all the money is not being used

If the system worked properly the benefit to the environment would be so mush greater
The money comes from the Eu modulation and matched by uk gov so is there
The gov only runs out of money when no one will lend it to them we are nowhere near that
 

Pie face

Member
So from next Monday they say the moneys due to flow - well I hope its not just going to be another broken promise because I ain't going to enter another cropping year under stewardship if I dont get paid in July, I just can't afford to.
 

Drillman

Member
Mixed Farmer
A2E861FA-00B1-43B9-90A8-8DB806E5A313.jpeg


Look what the RPA have kindly sent me!

A pamphlet with a picture of a farmer desperately trying to find out when there overdue money might arrive!
 

WRXppp

Member
Location
North Yorks
View attachment 815490

Look what the RPA have kindly sent me!

A pamphlet with a picture of a farmer desperately trying to find out when there overdue money might arrive!
I hope yours was wrapped in plastic just like mine, It beggars belief that a government dept which is responsible for the environment can do such a thing, why not just glue one edge and send it, we would all be curious as to what was inside it, even in the hope it was some of the money in a form of a cheque! Or just send it by email!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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