GovWire

Guidance: Commons eligibility checks

Rural Payments Agency

October 5
10:54 2022

Details

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) regularly checks and updates its digital maps. This includes checking common land.

How commons eligibility checks differ from other land eligibility checks

Land eligibility on common land is checked using the latest enhanced satellite images and a limited number of additional physical land checks. The main differences between these checks and our usual land eligibility checks are:

  • we check the land cover and land use on commons and not land boundaries which we cannot change because they are legally defined

  • we survey the eligible area of a common separately to the enclosed land farmed by the common land graziers who declared rights on the common for BPS

  • graziers claim for a common by declaring their grazing rights rather than applying directly for an area of land. This means that there will be no penalties for over-declaring if we discover the eligible area has reduced. This is because the common area was calculated by us, using the rights the grazier declared and the land data on our systems - so any overclaim was not caused by incorrect information declared by the grazier.

When and where to check for changes

We need to make sure that all land data is up to date, which is why we regularly carry out eligibility checks.

After a common is checked, if the eligible area has changed, we will write to you if you have declared rights on it as part of your BPS application. We and the Forestry Commission will also contact you if stewardship and/or forestry schemes are affected.

We will publish the new eligible area values in the Commons eligibility checks updated areas tables which you can find at the top of this page.

The changes might affect the value of your claims and payments for:

  • BPS

  • stewardship schemes

  • forestry schemes

This is because changes to the eligible area of a common affect the notional area which is used to calculate your BPS payment.

Read more information about how the notional area of the common is calculated in the Common land and shared grazing section of the relevant Basic Payment Scheme rules. The

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