Rural Payments Agency
Entitlement values, including those for greening, that will now be used to calculate farmers 2015 Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments have been confirmed by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).
Entitlement values
Under the BPS scheme, farmers need to hold an entitlement for every hectare of eligible land they are claiming on. The size of farmers payments will depend on how many entitlements they use, supported by eligible land and the value of those entitlements.
Entitlement values are:
BPS:
171.83 for non-SDA (Severely Disadvantaged Areas)
170.60 for upland SDA, other than moorland
45.07 for upland SDA moorland
Greening rates
Farmers must also meet new greening rules to receive additional funding. The greening part of payments will be calculated by taking the number of entitlements that they have used with eligible land to claim payment and multiplying it by the greening value.
The greening rates are:
76.19 for non-SDA (Severely Disadvantaged Areas)
75.64 for upland SDA, other than moorland
19.99 for upland SDA moorland
The exchange rate that will be applied is 1 = 0.73129
National Reserve
The schemes National Reserve - used to fund additional entitlements for the Young and New Farmers - has been set at 0.75%. The RPA will soon be contacting anyone who has applied for entitlements from the National Reserve to confirm if their application has been successful.
Young Farmer Payment
Eligible Young Farmers, who applied, will receive an additional payment equivalent to a quarter of their entitlement value. The RPA remains on track to make full BPS payments as early as possible in the payment window with the majority before the end of December and the vast majority by the end of January 2016.The BPS payment window opens in December and closes in June 2016.
The scheme guidance can be found at GOV.UK/rpa/bps.