BPS Updates for England April 21, 2015 12:00 am Greening Workbook The RPA has published a ‘Greening Workbook’ on its website at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/422907/Greening_workbook_vFINAL.pdf . It is designed to guide claimants through the Greening calculations to ensure they are meeting the rules. It does not form part of the application process, but is just an aid. Entitlement Transfer Where a person is only transferring entitlements out and will not be making a BPS claim this year they do not have to be registered on the Rural Payments service. However, there was a problem in such cases where they wanted an Agent to act for them, as permissions this year are still given via the online service. The RPA has now said that where an Agent was previously empowered under SPS to act for the person, if this is the correct empowerment it can be carried forward for entitlement transfer. It seems it may also be possible that the RPA may accept authorisation over the telephone from the transferor for a one-off transfer this year. Coding There is also a bit of confusion over land use codes. On the GOV.UK website under the suite of guidance titled ‘How to apply for the Basic Payment Scheme in 2015’ there is the ‘How to apply’ guidance and two further booklets; ‘Coding non-agricultural land’ and ‘Coding agricultural land’. But it appears you do not use the codes in these two latter documents to complete column C7 on the BP5 form. All the codes that should be used are in Annexes A and B of the ‘How to Apply for the 2015 Basic Payment Scheme in England’. If, when checking pre-populated forms, there are codes which are not in Annex A or B, you may find them in the coding booklets referred to above, but these need updating with the land use codes from Annex A and B. Apparently these booklets include all the full list of land use codes that are used on the underlying online service. Some forms may come pre-populated with some of these codes and claimants will be able to check to see what the land use is before changing it to one in Annex A or B of the ‘How to Apply’ guidance.
