The Single Farm Payment is a vital part of any farm’s income and can be the “make or break” for many businesses if things go wrong.
The RPA’s procedure for resolving any problems can be long and laborious and many who try often give up long before the process is concluded, whether due to frustration, time or the cost of engaging professionals to deal with the RPA. Cases can range from any number of issues relating to entitlements, and particularly entitlement correction, maladministration due to the length of time taken for the RPA coming back on a particular issue, incorrect advice being provided by the RPA, or a range of other issues that have led to poor or incorrect advice being provided by the RPA and subsequently relied upon. One of the most common cases we are finding involves previous transfers of entitlements, which have recently undergone entitlement correction and the RPA have found errors meaning that the entitlements should have expired some time ago (in some cases even prior to the previous transfer). This can mean that purchaser’s entitlements can be at risk from vendors who have previously transferred entitlements in from elsewhere, or not followed the ‘usage rule’ themselves. This was not picked up by the RPA (or the RPA confirmed the entitlements’ ‘live’ status despite the ‘usage rule’). To be fair to the RPA “usage rules” can cause historic problems the RPA are not responsible for. One way of safeguarding against this is to obtain a full determination of title in respect to the entitlements, which can be a long and expensive process. Alternatively one can ensure that any entitlement sales contract contains an undertaking from the vendor that they have previously complied with scheme rules and have good title to the entitlements they are transferring. This then provides a clear chain of liability if anything does go wrong, whereby the purchaser can make a claim relying on the vendor’s contractual undertaking, and the vendor can subsequently claim their damages from the RPA as long as they have evidence that the RPA were at fault.
The difficulty, however, often arises when dealing with case workers who are not legally trained and do not understand the concept of returning all parties to the position they would have been in had an error not occurred. The first hurdle to overcome is to break through this ‘barrier’, and speak with someone who makes decisions and has the appropriate legal knowledge regarding damage claims.
One remaining problem at present involves the actual procedure at the RPA for obtaining damages. Until recently the RPA have not been ‘geared up’ to process claims for additional costs/damages resulting from their errors, which goes some way to understanding the lack of knowledge regarding compensation claims at case worker level.
After correspondence with the head of the RPA and his senior directors now for over a year on a number of cases it is astonishing to find out that the RPA have no procedure to deal with compensation for professional costs as part of a damages claim, having not paid out for these on a regular basis before now. This suggests many may have given up trying to bring the RPA “to book” and illustrates our concern that there appears to have been a culture or policy of obstruction which encourages people to give up pursuing legitimate compensation.
However it does now appear we have finally got our message across in respect to this and are pleased to hear that the RPA are considering training their staff and producing a proper internal protocol to ensure they take full responsibility for the consequences of the unnecessary grief so often caused by their inefficiency.