RPA and Natural England a Complete Mess!

[Frank-the-Wool]

A year ago we had an inspection of our Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship. The chap came all the way down from Cumbria and spent 2 days over a weekend walking over the ground with a satellite mapping system (over 800 acres). The land is border dyked and in small field parcels and not easy to find your way around. He stayed in a hotel for the Friday and Saturday night and presumably as it was a weekend claimed overtime plus a large mileage charge for a round trip of over 500 miles.

He was a nice chap and seemed to be quite happy to be left to his own devices, but I could not see how he was going to be able to check all the details of the scheme in the short time he was here. The only query he had was that we had under declared a roadway.

Well I have just received the report and they are asking for a repayment of around 0.2% of the scheme money!
I have pages of his inspection (the original scheme covers nearly 400 pages) but I cannot find in any of the spreadsheets where the discrepancies they claim are. on is for just £34.00 and another for £42.00. the largest is for a length of ditch but I do not know which or where it is.

It looks as if they have just made up the repayment to cover his time costs!!
Has anyone else had one of these?

 

[Hindsight]

A year ago we had an inspection of our Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship. The chap came all the way down from Cumbria and spent 2 days over a weekend walking over the ground with a satellite mapping system (over 800 acres). The land is border dyked and in small field parcels and not easy to find your way around. He stayed in a hotel for the Friday and Saturday night and presumably as it was a weekend claimed overtime plus a large mileage charge for a round trip of over 500 miles.

He was a nice chap and seemed to be quite happy to be left to his own devices, but I could not see how he was going to be able to check all the details of the scheme in the short time he was here. The only query he had was that we had under declared a roadway.

Well I have just received the report and they are asking for a repayment of around 0.2% of the scheme money!
I have pages of his inspection (the original scheme covers nearly 400 pages) but I cannot find in any of the spreadsheets where the discrepancies they claim are. on is for just £34.00 and another for £42.00. the largest is for a length of ditch but I do not know which or where it is.

It looks as if they have just made up the repayment to cover his time costs!!
Has anyone else had one of these?

From your description of the inspection process and the eventual 'wash up' session with the inspector I suggest there has been some very small remapping in a couple of land parcels. As you mention under declaration of a roadway and a length of ditch can we presume these were amended on the Rural Land Register as PIF's (permanent ineligible features).

So my question is have you plodded through the spreadsheet list comparing the total parcel area and eligible area with the same CSS year BPS form submitted, and the current land register maps.

I have had similar and has taken me hours to work through each parcel methodically comparing with previous areas. Often easier I find to wait until completing the next BPS form with pre-populated areas for comparison.

 

[woodster]

Also had an inspector from Cumbria a couple of years ago who came to inspect my 'fallow' areas under the BPS as they were unclear on therir sattellite pictures. Inspection was in June by which time I had already sprayed off the blackgrass as permitted in the regs. She said I was in breach of regs for spraying and wouldn't believe me about it being permissable to control certain weeds untill she got back to her car and read up on the rules. Fortunately she accepted that I was right so the inspection was passed ok. Had I not been present to argue my case it could have taken months to sort out.
Is it too much to ask that inspectors actually know the rules before they are sent out?
If you can, always accompany them, you may be able to argue your case before anything becomes official and you get claims/fines made!

 

[Hindsight]

Also had an inspector from Cumbria a couple of years ago who came to inspect my 'fallow' areas under the BPS as they were unclear on therir sattellite pictures. Inspection was in June by which time I had already sprayed off the blackgrass as permitted in the regs. She said I was in breach of regs for spraying and wouldn't believe me about it being permissable to control certain weeds untill she got back to her car and read up on the rules. Fortunately she accepted that I was right so the inspection was passed ok. Had I not been present to argue my case it could have taken months to sort out.
Is it too much to ask that inspectors actually know the rules before they are sent out?
If you can, always accompany them, you may be able to argue your case before anything becomes official and you get claims/fines made!

You make a valid point. In a recent mid tier inspection the inspector was not familiar with the specific prescription for all the options, but he took a look at the government website with us in the farm office to familiarise self. And was quite OK as we thought some of the wild bird cover would not come up to scratch but he said was OK.

As these are quite complex prescriptions sometimes and given the number of options and as the most recent inspector said he had not come across skylark plots before I can appreciate that not all inspectors will be up to speed - which is why I say it is essential to ensure inspector has that office wash up session over coffee/tea and biscuits at the end and prior to writing the report. As a devil to get things changed later I have found.

I am aware where farmer 'fessed' up to spraying an overwinter stubble as the vegetation was clearly dead and it was only early May - unfortunately the inspector was not aware of the specific rules and said if we had not told him he would not have checked - but as we had told him he had no choice but to declare area as 'not found' which led to a fine of several thousand pounds.

 

[Extreme Optimist]

As always with NE/RPA, it is "guilty until proven innocent". I am certain that they make it as complicated as possible so that you are unable to track back and prove them wrong.
Make sure they do not try and invoice you for anything that was 6+ years ago as that is not legal

 

[livestock 1]

A year ago we had an inspection of our Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship. The chap came all the way down from Cumbria and spent 2 days over a weekend walking over the ground with a satellite mapping system (over 800 acres). The land is border dyked and in small field parcels and not easy to find your way around. He stayed in a hotel for the Friday and Saturday night and presumably as it was a weekend claimed overtime plus a large mileage charge for a round trip of over 500 miles.

He was a nice chap and seemed to be quite happy to be left to his own devices, but I could not see how he was going to be able to check all the details of the scheme in the short time he was here. The only query he had was that we had under declared a roadway.

Well I have just received the report and they are asking for a repayment of around 0.2% of the scheme money!
I have pages of his inspection (the original scheme covers nearly 400 pages) but I cannot find in any of the spreadsheets where the discrepancies they claim are. on is for just £34.00 and another for £42.00. the largest is for a length of ditch but I do not know which or where it is.

It looks as if they have just made up the repayment to cover his time costs!!
Has anyone else had one of these?

Yes. Exactly the same scenario here. Inspected 800 acres here this time last year and just got the report last week. Discrepancy of £29

 

[bobk]

Yes. Exactly the same scenario here. Inspected 800 acres here this time last year and just got the report last week. Discrepancy of £29

Is that £29 off the money they haven't paid yet .... or ever will

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

The saga of my inspection continues, today I received a statement for another of the mystery payments and to my disbelief they had already deducted what they claim are the incorrect amounts, the day before they sent the letter to me wanting me to pay them back.
To say I was p****d off would be an understatement.

I eventually got through to someone in Worcester who was quite helpful and has now emailed me the Excel spreadsheet that they are using which makes far more sense than what they sent to me in the post as it does show the discrepancies.
However I immediately spotted that they have entered the wrong areas in some of the boxes as on some parcels we have wintering waders GS10 and SP8 which on the original application both areas have always been the same for each parcel. They have managed to make them different now.

I have also immediately spotted a parcel which has ditches all around it that should have at least 440 metres but they have put down as zero.

The amount of money is very small in the grand scheme but it is very bad practice to deduct money that obviously should not have been taken before I had even received the notification.
I intend to appeal on principal.

 

[Stw88]

Yes. Exactly the same scenario here. Inspected 800 acres here this time last year and just got the report last week. Discrepancy of £29

Did the inspection hold your payment up? We were inspected in june. Took 2 of them 8 or 9 days to get round just over 2000 acres here. Still havnt herd anything back from them.

 

[livestock 1]

I’ve had a few of these and the reports take 8/12 months to arrive. On all occasions the payments have been held up to some degree but the time varies from a few weeks to 10 months. Is some of yours moorland?

 

[Stw88]

I’ve had a few of these and the reports take 8/12 months to arrive. On all occasions the payments have been held up to some degree but the time varies from a few weeks to 10 months. Is some of yours moorland?

Yes just under 50% moorland. Could be intresting, think they might end up owing us money as they mapped a lot of bits back in that we excluded to save hassel. Mixed stocking was making them scratch there heads. Gave them a heap of papers with stock numbers on and said work that out because i cant!

 

[livestock 1]

Yes ours has 1100 acres of fell on top of the 800 Inbye on the bits they inspected. They are tight on stocking figures now to keep under the stocking rate (which is still much higher than our land could ever carry) but mainly due to cattle grazing supplement which needs a percentage of lu’s to be suckler cows/cattle

 

[kneedeep]

We've just received our 'satisfactory' letter.....
From a April '18 inspection!

Comforting to know I'm Satisfactory !