Rural Payments agency and Highland cows

RunToEarth said:
Paperwork is absolutely pants, especially when diaries get left in the farm office and are returned to the house covered in cow muck! :D
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You should see my ''medicine book'' and my ''flock register'', I think they are actually cleaner when kept in the lambing shed :eek:, at least then the cat doesn't leave muddy pawprints on the pages. But hey, a bit of goo never killed anybody, lol.
 
RunToEarth said:
More form filling than you would ever imagine, a lot of people pull funny faces when we tell them that even grain needs a passport.

The SFP & ELS/HLS takes the most time, which is why they are usually delegated to us land agents, although my OH and my dad who are both farmers seem to think I'm going to do them a favour this year...

Paperwork is absolutely pants, especially when diaries get left in the farm office and are returned to the house covered in cow muck! :D
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Mmmmmm cow poo covered diaries sounds lovely ;) I guess alot of these processes are designed for people that actually know what they are doing so maybe not quite as confusing for other people but I have really struggled to actually know what I need to sort out. Thankfully the breeder we bought the cows from has been so helpful and sent a list of things I needed to do. I think someone (not me, I am too busy dealing with 2 cows :D) needs to write an idiots guide to cows. None of the agencies seem to connect to one another so I think it would be easy for someone like me to break laws and not follow guidelines simply through not knowing they existed rather than actually deliberately doing things wrong.

I shall wait for my DEFRA letter then and sort out their test. Last weeks challenge was finding a bigger comb to brush the cows with.... sounds easier than it is, week before was removing the flight feathers from the 2 white peacocks. I'm actually in accounts.... how did this happen?!
 
Don't do it!

That would be my advice, anyway. I have 30 acres and could claim over £1,000pa....

It just is not worth the hassle and you will then find the Rural Payments people have enormous powers over what you do and the arrogance to go with it. They can walk in at a moment's notice to carry out an inspection and use the loss of SFP as a threat if you dare to disagree.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. My neighbour was claiming over £400,000 a year. How the heck do they justify that? Over £1,000 a day just for occupying land!:eek:

Well, now you know where your 20% VAT goes! Not to the hard pressed hill farmers but to the fat cats who know how to work the system.
 
Dry Rot said:
Don't do it!

That would be my advice, anyway. I have 30 acres and could claim over £1,000pa....

It just is not worth the hassle and you will then find the Rural Payments people have enormous powers over what you do and the arrogance to go with it. They can walk in at a moment's notice to carry out an inspection and use the loss of SFP as a threat if you dare to disagree.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. My neighbour was claiming over £400,000 a year. How the heck do they justify that? Over £1,000 a day just for occupying land!:eek:

Well, now you know where your 20% VAT goes! Not to the hard pressed hill farmers but to the fat cats who know how to work the system.
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£400k :eek: omg!! Yeah the general consensus I am getting is that even when we do get more land it probably won't be worth claiming anything. In all honesty after seeing the form I would probably pay someone a few hundred £'s not to have the fill the bloomin thing in!!!
 
Perhaps we were just lucky then when we applied for SFP. Local auctioneer came out, checked land and filled in form for us (only 35 acres but in 3 parcels) took about an hour all in even with drawing the maps of boundaries. It got approved and within six months we had an inspection; I ask you for 35 acres when there are others with 1000s of acres that never get looked at! Turns out a computer does a random pick, just chance if you get picked. Anyway, chap was so impressed but thought we had sold ourselves short on a boundary which is a brook so he gave us some more entitlement! Ever since the first two years I have done the form myself (as nothing's changed) takes about ten minutes, is very easy to complete, job's done, it's a good'un.
 
Sort can't quote as I'm on my phone now! You make it sounds much more simple. I may re visit it when we get more land but unless there would be substantial gain I don't think it's worth it for us!
 
I used to work there a few years ago and £400k is prob a medium claim, certainly not that big.

As other people have said the biggest problem is cross compliance which is an enormous set of rules that if you break those you get fined/loose payments. Unless you're talking a fair few thousand it's not worth the hassle
 
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