Rural Payments Agency
Details
Terms and conditions, and rules for existing agreement holders, from 1 January 2024
Cross compliance ends at midnight on 31 December 2023. You must follow the modified terms and conditions that come into effect on 1 January 2024.
Read the Cross compliance page to find out more information about how this affects you.
Whats new for 2023
The cross compliance rules that you must meet have not changed.
Due to the way rural payments were funded, we applied penalties differently in previous years depending on a number of factors. All BPS claims and CS agreements will be under domestic terms and conditions from 1 January 2023. This means regardless of the scheme youre claiming for, or the year your agreement began, all cross compliance penalties will be applied in the same way.
Weve added a new section to tell you about our plans to replace BPS with delinked payments in 2024 and what this means for cross compliance.
Inspections (visits) and calculating penalties
If youre selected for a cross compliance visit, an inspector (field officer) will discuss with you what records you need to provide. You can read Cross compliance visits: information needed for a visit which shows a full list of all the records that an inspector may need to see during an inspection. However, for your inspection this list will only include what is relevant to your farm.
If you receive a cross compliance visit and the field officer finds something wrong, they use a set of standards called verifiable standards to assess how serious the non-compliance is. This is based on the extent of the non-compliance and how severe and permanent it is.
RPA then uses a guide (matrix) to work out the penalty that is to be applied.
Get a copy of the verifiable standards or guide from ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk. Tell RPA which documents you want and the year you want them for, and use Verifiable Standards as the email heading.
For detailed information read the Cross compliance visits and Penalties sections in the guide.
If you need help
The Farming Advice Service (FAS) is funded by Defra to provide free, confidential advice to farmers and farming industry advisers to help them understand and meet requirements for cross compliance, water use and quality, and pesticide use including integrated pest management planning.
Call them on 03000 200 301 or search online for more information about the Farming Advice Service.
Contact Rural Payments Agency
Email ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk
Helpline 03000 200 301