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A Second Progress Update On The Administration Of The Single Payment Scheme By The Rural Payments Agency
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Book Synopsis A second progress update on the administration of the single payment scheme by the Rural Payments Agency by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book A second progress update on the administration of the single payment scheme by the Rural Payments Agency written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rural Payments Agency and DEFRA have shown scant regard to protecting public money in their administration and management of the EU's Single Payment Scheme in England. The IT system does not meet the scheme's needs, the cost of processing claims has continued to increase and the administration of the scheme is not value for money. Payments to farmers have been made earlier, but the concerns over value for money previously raised by the National Audit Office and the Committee of Public Accounts have not been addressed. Under the 2008 scheme over 96 per cent of farmers were paid by mid May 2009, compared to 80 per cent by the same month for the 2006 scheme. However, the cost of the scheme is high and increasing: the average cost per claim is £1,743, an increase of 22 per cent on the 2005 scheme. (It compares to a cost of £285 per claim under the simpler Scottish system.) The report highlights additional administration costs of £304 million as a result of needing more staff than anticipated, £280 million set aside for disallowance and penalties, and the Agency anticipates that a further £43 million of overpayments will be irrecoverable. IT upgrades and maintenance since 2007, costing £130 million, have resulted in heavy customisation with complex software that is expensive and reliant on contractors to maintain. The cost of correcting earlier mistakes in processing claims has amounted to £119 million and overpayments are likely to be between £55 million and £90 million.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Accounts Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215542588 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (425 download)
Book Synopsis A Second Progress Update on the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Accounts Committee
Download or read book A Second Progress Update on the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Accounts Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the third report in 3 years on the subject of administration in England of the £1.6 billion Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (HCP 98, session 2009-10, ISBN 9780215542588), and follows an NAO report (HCP 880, session 2008-09, ISBN 9780102963182). The Committee states that oversight of the Single Payment Scheme is a singular example of comprehensively poor administration on a grand scale. With a paucity of good management information in the Agency and the complacent oversight by the Department having acted to obscure the true situation. A focus over the last two and a half years in bringing forward payments to farmers has enabled the Agency to bring its deadline forward by nearly seven weeks, but this is still six weeks off the deadline it had planned and a long way short of the standards set in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Also there has been a negligible attention to the protection of tax payers' interests. The Rural Payments Agency has spent £350 million on a cumbersome IT system that can only be supported at huge cost and which is increasingly at risk of becoming obsolete, with the data held in the system remaining riddled with errors and efforts to recover overpayments having been slow, disorganised and haphazard. The Committee identifies poor leadership within the Agency and a lack of attention by the Department. Each claim costs over six times more to process in England than in Scotland. Further the Department was not able to demonstrate an adequate grasp of the costs of administering the scheme. The Committee states that responsibility rests with the Accounting Officers to resolve this misadministration.
Author :Great Britain. Parliament House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts Publisher : ISBN 13 : Total Pages : pages Book Rating :4.:/5 (614 download)
Book Synopsis A Second Progress Update on the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency by : Great Britain. Parliament House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book A Second Progress Update on the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency written by Great Britain. Parliament House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis A progress update in resolving the difficulties in administering the single payment scheme in England by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book A progress update in resolving the difficulties in administering the single payment scheme in England written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2007-12-12 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was a report in October 2006 (HC 1631 2005-06) which looked at the problems in administering the 2005 single payments scheme in England. This report follows up by examining the progress made in resolving outstanding problems from 2005 and processing 2006 payments. It concludes that the new management team has instilled a clearer sense of direction and virtually all the outstanding 2005 payments were made by the end of December 2006. However the Agency has identified 34,499 cases where there might be errors in the original calculations and the review of most of these cases will be completed by the end of 2007. In the interim errors in payments in the first year were likely to have been repeated in the second year and the Agency was not able to administer the 2006 single payments scheme in a fully cost-effective manner.
Download or read book Conundrum written by Richard Bacon and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government failure is affecting everyone. The single mum worried sick by a tax credit demand from HMRC to 'repay' thousands of pounds she never received; the family whose holiday was ruined because the Passport Office couldn't issue passports in time; the school that couldn't open at the start of term because CRB checks were being carried out by an organisation in meltdown; the farmers led to bankruptcy and even suicide by a Kafkaesque system for administering farm payments; and rail operators facing an uncertain future because the Department for Transport inadvertently landed the whole rail franchising system in chaos. Why is government getting it so wrong? Richard Bacon and Christopher Hope delve into the astonishing world of cock-ups and catastrophes and ponder why those at the top continue to fall short.
Book Synopsis The Blunders of Our Governments by : Anthony King
Download or read book The Blunders of Our Governments written by Anthony King and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.
Author :Great Britain: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780102975260 Total Pages :240 pages Book Rating :4.9/5 (752 download)
Book Synopsis More cold comfort by : Great Britain: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Download or read book More cold comfort written by Great Britain: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has upheld complaints from nine farmers about the Government's handling of a subsidy scheme which caused them to miss out on payments they were entitled to. The farmers complained to the Ombudsman about the administration of the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) in 2005 and 2006 by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), The SPS is the latest generation of the EU schemes intended, among other policy aims, to give farmers direct income support. The farmers complained about RPA's handling of their claims to the SPS on a number of counts, including that they provided poor quality and sometimes ambiguous guidance on how to make a claim; failed to return applicants' telephone calls when this had been promised; misdirected applicants about the status of their cases; delayed letting applicants know that they would not be paid; and did not explain their decisions properly. RPA also failed to consider the effects their errors and omissions had on the farmers when they came to complain. In one case, a farmer misunderstood the new form and only claimed a subsidy for the year 2005. She did not activate her claim and subsequently did not receive a payment. No one questioned her mistake, even though RPA knew this was a common error by farmers. Losing a payment of over £13,000 left the farmer unable to pay all her bills and reliant on her partner's goodwill. She found out her mistake almost a year after submitting her claim, when she asked what had happened to her payment. Another farmer also misunderstood the new form and guidance and did not activate his claim. He was then led to believe by the RPA that he would be paid, which was not the case. He and his wife found the confusion and uncertainty of their circumstances particularly stressful. The farmer had to increase his overdraft, sell land and take on extra part time work in order to meet the financial shortfall. As a result of the Ombudsman's investigation the farmers will each receive a written apology from the Permanent Secretary of Defra and compensation of £500 for the inconvenience, distress and frustration that they experienced. They will also receive individual payments to put right the financial impact of RPA's failures. In addition, the Ombudsman has also asked RPA to provide an action plan setting out the changes they have made to prevent other farmers experiencing the same problems in future.
Book Synopsis Financial management in the European Union by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Financial management in the European Union written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-06-11 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a detectable improvement over the years in the financial management of European funds across the European Union. This title reports that the European Court of Auditors provided a positive Statement of Assurance, without qualification, on the reliability of the European Union's accounts for 2008.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215559265 Total Pages :90 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (592 download)
Book Synopsis The Common Agricultural Policy after 2013 by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Download or read book The Common Agricultural Policy after 2013 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee criticises the European Commission's proposed sweeping reforms of the CAP that would see the current complex and bureaucratic system of direct payments replaced by one that could be even worse. These changes include a new tier of environmental conditions, with penalties for farm businesses that do not comply or fail to meet new criteria for 'active' farmers, farm size and number of employees. The Committee sets out the key principles the UK government should promote. The first objective of the CAP should be to maintain and enhance the EU's capacity to produce food with a significant degree of self sufficiency and, in the long term, less reliance on income support from the tax payer. The UK's future food security is threatened by the low profitability of its agriculture. More than half of UK farm businesses would be unprofitable without the support they receive through the CAP. The Committee concludes that direct payments have a place within the CAP for as long as business conditions in agriculture fail to deliver a thriving and profitable industry. The CAP must deliver a competitive and viable agricultural sector that produces safe and high quality food with a lower environmental impact. The UK should press for the EU to argue more strongly for recognition of environmental and animal welfare production standards within trade agreements. The committee also warns that the EU proposal for a multi-tiered single farm payment will require expensive new computer systems and auditing.
Author :Great Britain. Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780102962765 Total Pages :164 pages Book Rating :4.9/5 (627 download)
Book Synopsis Cold Comfort by : Great Britain. Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Download or read book Cold Comfort written by Great Britain. Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report sets out the results of investigation into complaints, using two representative case studies, about the administration of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme in England, including the Rural Land Register. The Ombudsman made five general findings of maladministration: the Rural Payments Agency did not meet the legal obligation to determine entitlements by 31 December 2005; Defra & RPA failed to heed the warning information of their own systems and from the Office of Government Commerce; RPA's and Defra's public statements in early 2006 failed to recognise the internal concerns they had; on 30 January 2006 Defra officials and Ministers considered RPA's position - the best case scenario was 70% of payments to be made by the end of March 2006 and they decided to tell Parliament that RPA would make the 'bulk' of payments by the end of March 2006; RPA was the only body ina position to estimate how much more digital mapping work it would have and its planning for the mapping process fell far short of getting it right. In short the Ombudman's principles of getting it right, being open and accountable and being customer focussed were not adhered to
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215521842 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (218 download)
Book Synopsis A Progress Update in Resolving the Difficulties in Administering the Single Payment Scheme in England by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book A Progress Update in Resolving the Difficulties in Administering the Single Payment Scheme in England written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Single Payment Scheme replaced previous European Union production-based agricultural subsidy schemes from 2005. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, through the Rural Payments Agency, had chosen to implement the most complex option for reform in the shortest possible timescale, and the Agency had badly underestimated the scale of the task. This led to delays in making payments to farmers, erroneous payments and additional project and administrative costs, as reported in the Committee's earlier report (55th report session 2006-07, HC 893, ISBN 9780215036179). The Agency has estimated that there were £20 million of overpayments for the 2005 Scheme, and £17.4 million for the 2006 Scheme. The Agency has taken little action to recover the identified overpayments, with the risk that farmers may have unknowingly spent the money in the interim. Of 19 overpayments in excess of £50,000 paid in August 2006, the Agency had started the recovery process with only two of the farmers affected. Major changes made to the Agency's IT systems have enabled most farmers to receive payments earlier under the 2006 Scheme than for the 2005 Scheme. There has been a substantial impact on the costs of the business change programme to improve the Agency's efficiency, and the total project cost is now likely to exceed £300 million. In mid 2007, staff numbers in the Agency peaked at 4,600 and are not expected to reduce to 3,500 until 2010. The Agency is still not able to offer adequate advice to farmers on the progress of their claim. It was reluctant to specify targets by when such information would be available and when payments would be made under the 2008 Scheme.
Book Synopsis Civic Engagement in Food System Governance by : Alan R. Hunt
Download or read book Civic Engagement in Food System Governance written by Alan R. Hunt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local food movement is one of the most active of current civil engagement social movements. This work presents primary evidence from over 900 documents, interviews, and participant observations, and provides the first descriptive history of local food movement national policy achievements in the US, from 1976 to 2013, and in the UK, from 1991 to 2013, together with reviews of both the American and British local food movements. It provides a US-UK comparative context, significantly updating earlier comparisons of American, British and European farm and rural policies. The comparative perspective shows that, over time, more effective strategies for national policy change required social-movement building strategies, such as collaborative policy coalitions, capacity-building for smaller organizations, and policy entrepreneurship for joining together separate rural, farming, food, and health interests. In contrast, narrowly-defined single issue campaigns often undermined long-term policy change, even if short-term wins emerged. By profiling interviews of American and English movement leaders, policymakers, and funders, the book demonstrates that democratic participation in food policy is best supported when funders incentivize groups to work together and overcome their differences.
Book Synopsis Integration Across Government by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Integration Across Government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-03-13 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of the areas in the Whole-Place Community Budgets scheme has identified potential benefits from taking a more integrated approach to frontline services, focusing on outcomes like preventing avoidable hospital admissions or reducing reoffending. Greater Manchester, which covers ten local authorities, has estimated net savings of some £270 million over five years, while in West Cheshire savings of £56 million are estimated for the same period. In general, government has only limited information for identifying opportunities for integration or making an assessment of costs and benefits, which is needed to support the case for integration. In some instances where government has identified integration opportunities, benefits have not been achieved because of implementation difficulties. While the centre of government has recognized the importance of integration, it does not have clearly defined responsibilities to support or encourage frontline integration initiatives across government. It is early days for Whole-Place Community Budgets, central government and the four local areas have worked together effectively to assess the case for local service reforms. The true scale of potential benefits will become clear only if projects are implemented and evaluated robustly. Foundations have been laid but continuing collaboration - including sharing of data - between local and central government and delivery partners is essential to maximize the potential of Whole-Place Community Budgets. Accompanying this report, the NAO has released a case study looking at the four Whole-Place Community Budget areas, finding that these areas have taken a positive first step in assessing the case for integration (HC 1040, ISBN 9780102981339)
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215553195 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (531 download)
Book Synopsis Progress in improving stroke care by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Progress in improving stroke care written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report (HCP 405, session 2009-10, ISBN 9780215553195), looks at the "Progress in improving stroke care" and follows an NAO report (HCP 291, ISBN 9780102963441) on the same topic. Stroke is one of the top three causes of death and the largest cause of adult disability in England, costing the NHS at least £3 billion a year in direct care costs, with wider economic costs of around £8 billion. A 2006 report (HCP 911, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780215029683) highlighted serious shortcomings across the whole stroke care pathway. The Committee welcomes demonstrable improvements in stroke care which the Department of Health has achieved since. The Department and NHS have increased the priority given to stroke, particularly the speed of the acute hospital response. However, improvements have not been universal. The Committee finds it totally unacceptable that the likelihood of receiving a timely brain scan or accessing specialist care is dependent on where and when you have a stroke. Also the improvements in hospital care are not yet matched by progress in delivering more effective support once stroke survivors leave hospital with many patients discharged from hospital continuing to struggle to obtain follow-up care and access to community rehabilitation services remains a post-code lottery. The Committee has set out a number of conclusions and recommendations.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215553751 Total Pages :40 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (537 download)
Book Synopsis Hm Revenue and Customs' Estate Private Finance Deal Eight Years On by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Hm Revenue and Customs' Estate Private Finance Deal Eight Years On written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NAO report published as HC 30, Session 2009-10.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215553744 Total Pages :36 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (537 download)
Book Synopsis The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report examines the experience to date of delivering the debt advice project, and how the overall strategy for support to the over-indebted has been managed. Consumer debt stands at around £1,500 billion, and some 11% of the UK population struggle to manage their debts. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shares responsibility for co-ordinating the strategy with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice, and is responsible for the strategy's evaluation. There has been a complete failure to manage delivery of the strategy. Since 2006 the Department has also managed a project to provide face-to-face advice for those struggling with debt. The £130 million project is funded primarily from the Treasury's Financial Inclusion Fund, and delivered locally by Citizens Advice and other third sector organisations. Whilst greater success has been achieved in managing this particular project, which is delivering more debt advice than planned at a lower cost per person than budgeted, the project is currently unable to meet all the demand from those users it is intended to help. More people could be reached if the Department better understood consumer needs, the effectiveness of different methods of delivering debt advice, and the most efficient ways of providing advice. In addition, much debt advice is already provided by the private sector and the Department needs to consider both the quality of the advice provided and the contribution that private sector advice could make in the future.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215553614 Total Pages :36 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (536 download)
Book Synopsis Tackling Problem Drug Use by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Tackling Problem Drug Use written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are 330,000 problem drug users in England. They are estimated, based on research covering the 2003-04 period, to cost society over £15 billion a year, £13.9 billion of which is due to drug-related crime. Fully one quarter of all problem drug users are hard-core offenders for whom drug treatment is ineffective and, indeed, whose offending has sharply increased after entering treatment. It is of particular concern that measures to cut problem drug use by young people are having limited effect. Preventing the young from descending into problem drug use is an essential part of bringing down the number of problem drug users in future. In 2008, the Government introduced a 10 year cross-departmental drug strategy to tackle problem drug use, which it defined as use of opiates (mainly heroin) and/or crack cocaine. The Home Office has overall responsibility for the strategy, with a number of other government departments and agencies, at national, regional and local levels, sharing responsibility for its delivery. Central and local government collectively spend £1.2 billion a year to deliver the measures set out in the strategy. Given the public money spent on the strategy and the cost to society it is unacceptable that there has not been sufficient evaluation of the programme of measures in the strategy and that it is not known if the strategy is directly reducing the overall cost of drug-related crimes. Following a recommendation made by the National Audit Office, the Home Office has agreed to produce an overall framework to evaluate and report on the value for money achieved from the strategy, with initial results from late 2011.
