Pat on the back for Single Application Form completion
Scotland’s farmers have been encouraged to give themselves a pat on the back for completing the annual Single Application Form-filling task on time despite the challenges presented by the Covid crisis.
NFU Scotland said that a highly successful campaign to encourage Scotland’s farmers and crofters to meet the 15 May deadline for submitting this crucial paperwork would smooth the way to a successful schedule for delivering crucial payments later this year.
Despite extensions being granted to producers in England and Wales – giving them extra time to fill in the complex forms – the decision to stick to the normal deadline was backed by the union.
“It took a concerted, collective effort, but sticking to the deadline and ensuring that claimants had all the support and information needed to complete their forms on time has been rewarded by the uptake,” said the union’s policy director, jon ni eh all.
He said that by sticking to the 15 May deadline, the Scottish Government rural payments department now had the best opportunity to complete the processing of the claims and, crucially, to make payments in a timely manner.
But Hall was swift to thank staff at local department offices for their input:
“The help and assistance offered by RPID area offices and helplines this year was exceptional and a crucial factor in getting so many applications over the line.”
He said that 19,487 forms had been submitted by the deadline, for claims under key schemes such as Basic Payment Scheme, Greening, Less Favoured Areas Support, Beef Efficiency Scheme, Young Farmers and Agri-environment Climate Scheme.
The number of forms completed online had increased by two per cent to more than 18,000 – approximately 92 per cent of all applications this year - with only 8 per cent received in paper form.
Hall said that this was good news as the concession to apply by paper was coming to an end - and all applications would need to be submitted online by 2022.
He also reminded producers that changes to the forms could be made without penalty up until Monday 1 June 2020.
However the union yesterday urged the industry to become involved in another key informationgathering exercise yesterday.
Calling on those with employees to take part in an important survey on labour requirements, the union’s president Andrew Mccornick said that the Covid crisis had served to emphasise the importance and value of the people working on farms, crofts and agricultural businesses.
“2020 is a watershed year as we face a significant economic shock paired with the as-yet-unknown conclusion of the future relationship negotiations between the UK and the EU, including the creation of a new system of immigration from 1 January 2021.”
He said that with discussions currently underway with Government, the Migration Advisory Committee, the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board and the Low Pay Commission, it was crucial that the union could get hard information from its membership to allow it to feed robust evidence into the talks to ensure the industry’s needs were represented at the current critical time.