EXCLUSIVE: RPA overpayed staff
The agency, part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), was at the centre of Single Payment Scheme (SPS) fiasco when many farm businesses nearly collapsed because of delays in payments being sent out.
It has now emerged while Devon and Cornwall farmers were waiting anxiously for their money the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) was making mistakes in administering the wages of its staff.
Equally concerning, the RPA was unable to pinpoint the total amount overpaid to its workers. However, it did release the amounts it had failed to recover from staff in the last three years.
That amounted to £18,852 last April, £27,725 in April 2007 and £21,049 in April 2006. The figures were released to the Western Morning News under the Freedom of Information Act.
South West National Farmers' Union spokesman Ian Johnson said: "It is somewhat ironic and will leave a bitter taste for a lot of farmers who couldn't get any payment at all, let alone what they were entitled to, for a long time when they were clearly in great need.
"It is indicative of a culture, certainly at national level, which is far too detached from the industry that it serves."
The RPA, which currently employs 3,400 people full-time, put the mistakes down to "system errors", payroll not being informed of changes in hours and "incorrect keyings on payroll".
East Devon Conservative MP Hugo Swire said it was "absolutely unacceptable" if taxpayers' money was not being "claimed back as quickly as possible".
"All my experiences of the RPA is that it is far too bureaucratic and they don't necessarily enjoy the confidence of the farming community," he added.
"I think we do need to know the total figure that has been overpaid as well as the total figure that has yet to be claimed back. Other agencies are extremely thorough in recording this information and the RPA should be as rigorous as they purport to be before they hand out any money to hard-pressed farmers.
"You can't have one rule for farmers and another for RPA employees. If they employ the same bureaucracy in trying to claim the money back from staff as they do in giving money out to farmers, we will never see that money ever again."
Farmers in the region were at their wits end when the new, simplified payment scheme, bringing together several projects, was launched in 2005.
A computer system designed to help calculate payments went into meltdown, severely delaying payments and pushing many farmers to the brink of collapse.
That malaise has continued with the Government admitting this summer one in five farmers in England will not be paid this year. Farming minister Jonathan Shaw said 80 per cent of the money should have gone out by the end of the year, and 90 per cent by April 2009.
In contrast, the Welsh Assembly succeeded in paying 97.7 per cent of eligible 2007 applicants, and met a European target of 96 per cent in 2005 and 2006.
Earlier this month, farmers were angered by news that the RPA spent £250,000 on a single member of staff for less than 12 months' work.
The agency's annual report for 2007/08 showed a finance director, employed on a temporary basis through a recruitment agency, was paid £249,651 from June 2007. Its human resources director was also paid £263,812 from September 2006.
A spokesman for the RPA said: "While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, minor payroll errors are an ongoing issue for many large organisations and have a variety of causes including readjustments due to changes in staff status or hours."
