The deadline for submitting applications and supporting evidence to the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) for the Small Dairy Farmers Scheme is Wednesday 31 May.

To be eligible for the one-off payment, dairy farmers must have produced 1m litres or less between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016 and have to still be in milk production.

Application forms can be downloaded from the RPA website and must be received by the RPA in Newcastle upon Tyne along with all supporting evidence by midnight on Wednesday.

Farmers are advised to print applications, scan completed forms and supporting evidence, and then email them to the RPA. Holstein UK is currently running a service from its Dungannon office to help farmers with applications.

“Forms and evidence can be posted too but there have been issues with similar schemes in the past with forms being delayed or lost.

‘‘Post is not being collected or delivered on Monday with the bank holiday either,” pointed out John Martin from Holstein UK.

Applicants are required to state the volume of milk produced between April 2015 and March 2016 and provide statements from processors as evidence of deliveries over the 12-month period.

Some processors have issued relevant information to suppliers to cover the reference period.

Suppliers to processors that have not, are required to send monthly milk statements to the RPA as evidence.

Funding

The Small Dairy Farmers Scheme was announced by DAERA earlier this month as a means of using leftover funds from NI’s £4.1m allocation of EU Exceptional Adjustment Aid before the European Commission’s deadline of 30 September 2017.

The exact amount of funding available is not known and depends on the uptake of the other measures funded from the aid package, although it is understood to be at least £1.5m.

Payment rate

The rate paid to farmers will be on a per-litre basis up to a cap of 500,000 litres.

The payment rate also depends on how many farmers apply for the scheme, with at least 70% of dairy farmers across NI thought to be eligible.