A MAJOR shake-up of the Rural Payments Agency has been unveiled in an effort to make it more efficient and stabilise the service.

The five-year plan will cover the remaining period of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and put in place replacement systems to deliver payments after the CAP reform are brought in next year.

Defra is putting £21.8m into the RPA reform in the next financial year and has earmarked a provisional pot of £19.1m for the next two years.

Farming minister Jim Paice said: “The RPA’s historical problems have been well documented, but the five-year plan sets out a clear path to deal with that legacy and ensure the RPA provides a high level of service in the future.

“There have been significant improvements in the speed and accuracy of payments over the last year, but there’s still much more to be done and we’re building solid foundations to prepare for the considerable changes the RPA will face over the next five years.”

By the end of the five-year period, the RPA aims to have created a new system able to implement the reformed CAP schemes and to run them smoothly without the errors previously associated with agency.

It has set the goal of delivering a “far better” service to farmers, including more timely and accurate payments, and to have reduced manual payments, debts and backlogs to “near-zero levels”.

It aims to contain disallowance to the current 2% of SPS claim value and built good foundations to reduce this further, plus ensure the removal of its accounts qualification – imposed by the National Audit Office over European penalties levied because of problems in 2005-7.

A number of recommendations to improve the agency have already been made and the plan aims to put them into action.

RPA chief executive Mark Grimshaw said: “There has been steady improvement in performance over the past year and real progress on turning RPA into a customer focused agency.

“Costs have been reduced while customer satisfaction scores have increased and good progress has been made in tackling some of the legacy issues. We have also just announced record breaking 2011 payment figures for the first month of the seven month payment window.

“But there is still work to do, which is why we want to put an end to short-term fixes and workarounds.”

For more on the reforms, see tomorrow’s Journal, when Karen Dent speaks to Mr Grimshaw about the details of the plan.