BPS Conversion Rate

Payments under the Basic Payment Scheme will be converted at a rate of €1 = 73.129p.  As the table below shows, this is the least favourable rate for the last eight years and is around 6% down on last year and 13% lower than 2013.

Although this is one more piece of information, we are still some way short of knowing what actual payment rates will be.  The RPA and devolved administrations still have to calculate actual entitlement values.  With the move to the BPS there is more uncertainty around this than usual.  In England there are a number of ‘unknowns’;

• effect of rebalancing the Lowland / SDA / Moorland entitlement rates
• Possible change in the number of entitlements claimed compared to the SPS (minimum claim size, Active Farmer rule etc.)
• Deductions to fund the National Reserve and Young Farmer Payment
• Annual change to the BPS National Ceiling (budget)
• Rate of Financial Discipline

In Wales and Scotland the level of uncertainty is even greater with the move from historic to regional payments, probably greater change in the number of hectares claimed, and the deductions for Redistributive and Coupled payments.  Our current estimates are given in Key Farm Facts.

As to payment, the RPA continues to sound confident about ‘making the majority of payments in December and the vast majority before the end of January’.  Of course, they were very confident about the online Rural Payments system as well – right up until the point it was scrapped.  So they have rather used up their reserves of trust.  We believe it is prudent to budget for the support to arrive in Feb/March and if it turns up any earlier then that’s a bonus.   Wales are doing a 80% prepayment ‘as early as possible’ with the remaining 20% coming after May 2016.  Scotland is probably on a similar sort of timescale to England, possibly slightly later.