The Foundation has become increasingly concerned about how the new Basic Payment Scheme will be implemented on common land. We have written to the Minster, George Eustice and hope to get some answers soon.
Dear Mr Eustice,
Common Land Matters
I am writing you to ask you to address a number of matters that are affecting the ability of common land to be properly managed. These do require resolution before purdah begins.
1. Calculation of BPS Notional Area
Due to the slow handling of the legal challenge with regard to Minchimhampton and Rodborough Commons none of the 4,500 applicants for BPS on England’s common land know how their notional area will be calculated. Commoners cannot therefore determine whether they have the correct number of entitlements or not; they may have too many – and lose them - or too few and miss out on payments. While I appreciate the matter is complex and the ramifications of a change in policy are substantial this uncertainty is wholly unsatisfactory so close to when BPS applications are to be made. We therefore request that you urgently decide the method Defra will adopt to determine notional area on common land and if it is to be changed and ‘naked hectares’ removed you inform people how they will be provided additional entitlements as their notional area is to increase.
2. Dual Use between Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 Schemes
I know you have been considering this matter. Two matters alarm me; firstly the policy appears to being dictated by the capacity of the IT systems. IT I would have thought be a tool to deliver not dictate policy. Land tenure on common land is complex and it is this complexity that has to a large degree ensured commons still deliver more public benefits than any other type of land. Dual usage to a large degree is an inevitable consequence of the extant property rights and therefore provisions need to be made to ensure common land can be properly managed and deliver the public benefits it is designated for e.g.. over 58% of common land is SSSI compared with 7% of England in total.
Furthermore there is substantial uncertainty as to exactly what will constitute dual use; please can you confirm the position. For instance if a common had 26 claimants for Pillar 1 but only 13 are graziers who are party to the Pillar 2 agreement will that be dual use (i.e. 50% overlap). What if the percentage is 10% or 90%?
3. Mapping Issues
The RPA decided over two years ago to digitally map common land, a process we support. Unfortunately it has taken considerably more time than envisaged to produce draft maps with the result commoners are only being sent their draft maps in the next 3 weeks. These are often large areas of land and the maps are being sent out to all claimants of SPS, in some case to over 50 businesses for a single common land unit. They are being given 28 days liaise between themselves to review the maps and return their comments to the RPA. These will be considered and after to-ing and fro-ing the area finalised – but not in time for commoners to be able to accurately estimate their notional area. This is bang in the middle of lambing when commoners are exhausted and association meetings are not practical. If they do not do this work then there is a risk BPS is calculated from an erroneous baseline. We would therefore ask that the total area of the common is not finalised until later in the year, say June when commoners will have had time to respond. We therefore request that for 2015 commoners do not have entitlements confiscated if they have more than they require.
4. Applying for BPS on Common Land – CAP-IT
We were disappointed and amazed to learn that there will be no means to change the common land data on the online BPS application process. It will simply be pre populated with last year’s claim. If a farmer’s common rights have changed then they will have to ring customer services and inform them of the change. How will these changes be confirmed to the farmer?
We realise that 2015 is a challenging year for Defra and the RPA and inevitably there will be teething problems but none of these are of the farmers making and they should not therefore be penalised for the inadequacy of the systems this year. Addressing the above points in the next 2-3 weeks will go some way to reduce the negative impact on the commoners.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Aglionby
Executive Director
