Payment timings for Mid/Higher Tier

WRXppp

Member
Location
North Yorks
Send a contra invoice with their unpaid amount offsetting what they've billed you for. None of what I've read surprises me any more.
It’s just the way they send you an invoice and the wording around it, if it was like ‘we know we owe you 10 times more than what we actually think you owe us so can we knock it off’ and the other thing is if you go to appeal for said invoice it blocks any payments being paid until resolved it really is farcical!
We are at present all up to date but it makes me so mad that others are still in the dark about when payments will arrive, my ELS/HLS advance 2018 payment arrived out of the blue in mid November, I put it in for March this year 3 months late! Maybe after my 30 min chat with a team leader last March with a whole list of home truths re cash flow forecasting, paying bills and if they only pay NE staff on a lottery based basis eg you are all so lucky and done such a wonderful job this month we have paid 60% of you this month has flagged me up as a trouble maker i’m not sure but we shouldn’t have to go through this!
Good luck to all who are still waiting, and try get hold of someone higher up, if they trot out the ‘hardship’ line ask to go higher up the ladder, be polite, to the point, mention cash flow, and then gently turn it round on them and ask what their office would be like if only 75% of them where paid one month and the others told they would be paid ‘sometime’ how moral would be!
 

Wooly

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Romney Marsh
Send a contra invoice with their unpaid amount offsetting what they've billed you for. None of what I've read surprises me any more.

I doubt the department that issued the invoice for the overpayment knows whether you've ever been paid or not.


The great thing is the letter said they would add interest if I didn’t pay the 40p and £27 back on the money they haven’t actually paid me!

Does that set a president that I can charge them interest on the many thousands of pounds they owe me !?!
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Good luck with that one! I think you'd ned a very good lawyer to win that case - you'd have to prove your contract with NE (now the RPA) specified when you'd be paid.
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
Good luck with that one! I think you'd ned a very good lawyer to win that case - you'd have to prove your contract with NE (now the RPA) specified when you'd be paid.
Having read my agreement terms there was no agreement on timings beyond the first spring, we all agreed to these grossly unfair contracts in good faith. We wrongly assumed payments would continue to be reliable as they have been in previous agreements. Few of us would have agreed to such terms if this was some private rather than government backed scheme.
 

Wooly

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Romney Marsh
I had a meeting with a few top brass of Natural England who did point out there was no legal framework for payments.

In theory, legally, they need not pay these schemes for years !

Not sure that is wise if they want farmers to re-sign when the scheme runs out !
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
I had a meeting with a few top brass of Natural England who did point out there was no legal framework for payments.

In theory, legally, they need not pay these schemes for years !

Not sure that is wise if they want farmers to re-sign when the scheme runs out !
Its not natural England’s problem anymore as they offloaded us on to the RPA, they too will pass the buck eventually. If they continue to treat farmers like fools there will be no renewals. Perhaps if a few of us can take turns circling the homes and offices of the head brass and Mr Gove with trailer loads of chicken sh!t, they might come to their senses...
 

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
I actually feel sorry for the staff as I believe they are fed up and disenchanted with the whole system. Although everything has supposedly moved to the RPA some of the old NE staff are still trying to sort out the mess.

I received an email to say there was a double claim on a parcel that has not changed for 30 years. Having still not been paid for BPS or CS I made a lot of effort to try to sort this out.
I guessed that a mapping error had been made but they denied it.

However after a week I discovered the parcel in question had been removed from my BPS and CS, an area of over 20 ha.
I then began to get very hacked off and banged off emails to all and sundry.
The mystery was solved by our NE adviser who discovered on a different mapping system that the parcel had been merged with a neighbours!! Hence the dual claim.

To be fair once this was discovered the chap at RPA has been able to reinstate the parcel and hopefully we will soon be paid.
At least their target is to now pay the belated CS payments by the end of March!!
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
My accountant wants to know if I had any environmental money that need to be accounted for as owning at the end of our last tax year.... I am not sure what the correct answer is to that query, it can't be owning if there is no schedule as to when it would be owed. :scratchhead:
 

RobJC

Member
I have to send off some evidence for my claim, I have rung RPA 03000 200 301 a few times, follow the appropriate options and the line goes dead, or no one is available.

Can anyone confirm that the e-mail address you send Stewardship info to is Email: [email protected] ?

Seems to me, that email address must get a hell of a lot of traffic for everything RPA related, rather than just Stewardship.
 

RobJC

Member
[email protected]
I have to send off some evidence for my claim, I have rung RPA 03000 200 301 a few times, follow the appropriate options and the line goes dead, or no one is available.

Can anyone confirm that the e-mail address you send Stewardship info to is Email: [email protected] ?

Seems to me, that email address must get a hell of a lot of traffic for everything RPA related, rather than just Stewardship.


Nevermind, finally got through [email protected] for Devon. I thought they'd shifted Stewardship from NE to RPA, but apparently still using the old email addresses.
 

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
My accountant wants to know if I had any environmental money that need to be accounted for as owning at the end of our last tax year.... I am not sure what the correct answer is to that query, it can't be owning if there is no schedule as to when it would be owed. :scratchhead:

This is one of the greatest Con tricks that we all unwittingly signed up to.
Those of us that have been in environmental schemes for many years have seen our situation completely change. Originally we were paid in advance for income foregone.
Now gradually we have been paid in arrears, however the Con has been that they only said when we would be paid in the first year, which was because they moved the start date to the 1/1 of every year the majority of us had no money for a few months.
The next Con was that with most environmental schemes you have to actually spend money, so they give you the first payment (75%) in year one in December (or in many cases between January and March the next year) with the other 25% in June, possibly.
This year as far as I know the payment due in December will not be paid until the end of March!!
As far as I can see after the first year there is no schedule of payments so we just hope they will pay us!

So you are quite right about what you say to your accountant, but to avoid paying too much tax you probably need to include the money in the year when you should have received it, even if you don't get it!!
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
This is one of the greatest Con tricks that we all unwittingly signed up to.
Those of us that have been in environmental schemes for many years have seen our situation completely change. Originally we were paid in advance for income foregone.
Now gradually we have been paid in arrears, however the Con has been that they only said when we would be paid in the first year, which was because they moved the start date to the 1/1 of every year the majority of us had no money for a few months.
The next Con was that with most environmental schemes you have to actually spend money, so they give you the first payment (75%) in year one in December (or in many cases between January and March the next year) with the other 25% in June, possibly.
This year as far as I know the payment due in December will not be paid until the end of March!!
As far as I can see after the first year there is no schedule of payments so we just hope they will pay us!

So you are quite right about what you say to your accountant, but to avoid paying too much tax you probably need to include the money in the year when you should have received it, even if you don't get it!!

Yep we where all duped big time, how naive we where to think that a government backed scheme that looked much like a rebranding of the previous schemes would be honourably administrated. I self applied but legally trained land agents should have recognised these terms to be grossly unfair and not allowed their clients to sign until the terms were revised!!

We have decided to assume nothing is owing until it is paid regards Mid-Tier, else I am paying tax now on income that might not come for another year, or ever! Cereals prices and subsidy over the next few years is most likely to fall, I expect some leaner years ahead than the year just gone so at least delayed payments, if they come, may slightly cushion the fall...
 

Wooly

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Romney Marsh
I've had this discussion with my accountant.

Now only add the payments to the accounts once it has been paid. No point in paying tax on a promised payment.

It's not quite so important now with 5 year averaging.


The whole CSS payment agenda is a complete shambles. I certainly wouldn't recommend any farmer entering it if they have a choice. The time spent on administration and CSS expense to comply to the scheme, is beginning to not justify the effort and reward of the scheme.
 

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