Written by Rachel Martin
Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots has announced plans to reduce cross-compliance penalties for 2021.
Statutory Management Requirements (SMRs) are requirements of area-based schemes such as the Basic Payment Scheme, Greening Payment and Young Farmers Reserve. The regulations cover the environment, climate change, public health, animal health and plant health and animal welfare, in addition to maintaining all their land in good agricultural and environmental condition.
Where the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs finds a cross-compliance breach at inspection, a penalty is applied to the scheme payment.
How are cross-compliance penalities calculated?
The cross-compliance penalty regime includes two penalty matrices which set out the penalties to be applied depending on whether a non-compliance is found to be either intentional or negligent.
While some of the penalties are lower, farmers can still lose up to 100% of their farm payments for the most serious cases.
Penalties range from a warning letter for low impact, negligent rectifiable breaches up to a possible 100% penalty for the most serious cases.
Announcing the change to the matrices, Minister Edwin Poots said: “As Minister for Agriculture and the Environment, I know that by far the vast majority of farmers in Northern Ireland are good stewards of the land and farm to very high standards; protecting our environment; protecting the health and welfare of animals; and ultimately protecting human health.
“Now that we have left the European Union, I have asked my department to look at how cross-compliance can be made to work better, helping farmers to improve where needed while still protecting our environment and our food standards.
“While that work is taking place, I have decided to reduce some of the penalties that farmers receive when they do not comply with the cross-compliance standards. These changes will keep Northern Ireland in line with other administrations within the United Kingdom.”
What changes will be made in the meantime?
The minimum and maximum penalty for each penalty matrix is set out in legislation so this has not changed – remaining at 1% to 5% for negligent and 15% to 100% for intentional. However, the penalties for some of the bands between have been changed.
For intentional breaches, instead of a multiplier of three for repetition of intentional breaches, a multiplier of two will now be used. A breach of the same requirement within three calendar years is considered repetition.
Where the differences between severity may have previously increased the penalty by 5%, these increases are now set at around 2%.
Full details of the new interim regime can be found below.
Click or tap to enlarge. Image source: DAERA
Click or tap to enlarge. Image source: DAERA
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