Rural Payments Agency

Mr. Paice
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what steps he is taking to resolve the applications from applicants for the Entry Level Scheme where applications have been delayed because of disputes over Rural Payments Agency mapping and where payments have consequently been lost for one year; and if he will pay compensation to those affected.

Ian Pearson
The Rural Development Service (RDS) have implemented a variety of measures to facilitate the earliest possible entry into the Environmental Stewardship (ES) Scheme.

Under the Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) strand of ES in particular, the following steps have been taken:

Monthly, rather than quarterly start dates were implemented in the summer of 2005;

Shortly after the launch of the scheme, a prioritisation list of ELS applicants with outstanding Rural Land Register (RLR) mapping issues was established. This enabled Rural Payment Agency staff to prioritise cases more effectively;

In circumstances where applicants were not able to fully register all of their land on the RLR, applicants could consider either:

applying for an agreement on the land initially registered and then applying for a separate subsequent ELS agreement on the newly registered land; or

applying for an agreement on the land initially registered and then once land registration for all land was completed, applying for a new, re-started agreement across the whole of the holding.

It should also be noted that applicants are able to take up a full five-year ELS agreement. Therefore, though payments may be initially delayed for some, the opportunity to participate in an ELS agreement and receive payment for this will not be lost.

Given the steps outlined, and the voluntary nature of the ES scheme rather than its being a regulatory entitlement, I do not believe that there is a sufficiently robust case for compensation, where a later than anticipated entry into the scheme has been experienced.