How to check your payments

The easiest means of checking is to convert last year’s statement to the current year. Former set-aside entitlements will be paid at the regional rate and no adjustment is needed. See SPS payment history for current and historic area payments and historic phasing.

Example of SPS calculation

		Example (non SDA)
From last year’s statement showing the gross Euro payment in €/ha for each entitlement block		€360.00
Deduct the 2010 regional Euro value		-€241.14
= Historic element		€118.86
Apply the historic reduction factor from table above	0.3977943979
= New historic element		€47.28
Add new regional element		€289.94
Total gross entitlement value		€337.22
Repeat for all entitlement blocks
Multiply each block by the number activated to give gross payment		100 x 337.22 = €33,722
If over €5000 deduct €700 (i.e. €5,000 x 14%) Otherwise deduct 14% from the gross value.		-€700.00
Where over €5,000 deduct €5000 from the gross and deduct 19% of the remainder from the gross		=(33,722-5,000) x 0.19 -€5,457.22
Net Euro payment		€27,564.97
Multiply by the £/euro exchange rate		0.86665
Net payment due		£23,889.18

Where sugar beet is involved, it is necessary to deduct last year’s sugar payment from last year’s historic value before applying the reduction and then add the current year’s sugar beet payment to the result. The sugar beet contribution is based on the 2005/6 contract tonnage divided over the available entitlements in 2006 (excluding set aside or any SDA or Moorland entitlements also held). Thus if 1000 tonnes were held and there were 100 entitlements there would be 1000/100 = 10 sugar beet entitlements. In 2010 the extra value per entitlement would have been 10 x €3.526882 and in 2011 10 x €1.411122.

The calculation will not be absolutely correct because the entitlement statement only shows two decimal figures but it will be close. The average farm business will have a payment approximately 5% lower than last year.

Many farmers still have errors in their subsidy payment, some going back to 2005. The commonest errors are where documents have been incorrectly scanned into the RPA system or where entitlements have been transferred to or from other businesses. There are a number of 2010 payments where incorrect corrections have been made for the 2008 year.

We strongly recommend that the 2012 application is completed on-line to remove the scanning problem and speed payment. The system works well once past the security!