SCOTTISH farmers will receive their single farm payment (SFP) cheques from 1 December. The total is expected to be around £400 million.
Last year 70 per cent of claimants received the full payment on 1 December. That rose to 90 per cent by the end of December and 97 per cent a month later. Only a very few problems were encountered.
Cabinet Secretary for rural affairs Richard Loch
head said:
"By successfully delivering the SFP against an established timetable … budgets and cash flows can be planned and banking arrangements put in place, safe in the knowledge that payments will begin in December. The industry tells us that it likes this certainty and that to disrupt it by making payments early would not be welcome."
Scott Walker, senior policy adviser with the National Farmers Union Scotland, said: "We are not pressing for an early advance payment of SFP because we believe that nothing would happen in any event before early December."
The consensus appears to be that any attempt to rush the SFP schedule has the potential to disrupt the payment of the £61m due to hill and upland farmers through the Less Favoured Area Support Scheme (LFASS).
The industry would prefer to see the cash from the SFP and LFASS delivered in the same calendar year. That remains the stated objective of the Scottish Government, but with financial resources under pressure it may not be until after the New Year when full payment of LFASS is completed.
However, Liam McArthur MSP, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on rural affairs, is of the opinion that the cheques for SFP should start to be issued in October with LFASS close behind.
He said: "In failing to take advantage of early payments, the Scottish Government has let down the farming community."
The SFP is calculated on one single day – 30 September – and is based on the prevailing rate between sterling and the euro.
Farmers have the option of accepting payments in either pounds or euros and some astute business operators have taken forward positions through their banks. A euro as of yesterday was worth about 86p, but several, mostly large businesses, are known to have locked into an exchange rate of over 90p. That is clearly way above the 70p that was on offer only two years ago.
In any event farmers in Scotland are set to fare much better than their counterparts in England. The Scottish SFP regime is based on the historical concept whereas in England the scheme is area related.
The Rural Payments Agency, which operates the SFP in England, decided early this year that all farms should be subject to re-mapping to iron out inconsistencies. Instead many farmers complaining that the new maps are hopelessly inaccurate.
