The Rural Payments Agency has published an updated reduction matrix and a list of the most common cross compliance breaches on the RPA website along with some useful check lists to help claimants prepare for inspections.

The standard reduction for a first time breach of cross compliance standards will now be 3% for SPS 2009 (including direct payments for Area Payments for Nuts, Protein Crop Premium and Aid for Energy Crops) and for Pillar 2 schemes such as Environmental Stewardship schemes.

EU regulations state that the 3% reduction can be increased or reduced, depending on the severity of the breach.

When cross compliance was introduced in 2005 a key requirement of the legislation was to inspect against a set of specific standards. Where farmers were found to be in breach of the requirements, their payment was to be reduced.

Until now RPA has implemented a ‘light touch’ approach and approved a reduction matrix based on issuing warning letters for the majority of first time breaches, particularly for cattle inspections.

However recent EU audits have deemed RPA to have been too lenient. RPA has been advised that disallowance fines will be imposed if we do not implement the regulations correctly.

For all 2009 SPS inspections RPA will be issuing 3% reductions for the majority of cross compliance breaches found.

Details of the cross compliance reduction matrix and guidance can be found by following the link to www.rpa.gov.uk/crosscompliance on the RPA website.

Further guidance and assistance with complying with the cross compliance standards can be obtained from the cross compliance advice programme run by Momenta.

Notes to editors:

1. The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) is an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It is the single paying agency responsible for CAP schemes in England and for administering certain schemes, including the OCDS and Milk Quotas, throughout the UK.

2. Statistics for 2008 inspections are still being compiled. 2007 figures show that SMR 7/8 (Cattle identification inspections) had the highest failure rate with the most common breaches being

• Failure to report movement of an animal
• Failure to report death of an animal
• Movement details not recorded or incorrectly recorded on CTS or in farm records
• Lost tags not replaced, animals not tagged

• Failures in reporting deaths and movements of cattle. Problems also found with movements not being correctly recorded in the on-farm records or not recorded at all. Animals found with no passport or passports present with no animals. Animals found that have never been tagged or lost all tags and failure to replace missing tags within 28 days.