The government has failed to meet key payment dates for a number of farm schemes. The schemes include the Beef Efficiency Scheme (BES), Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS) and Rural Priorities.

However, the target to have 95% of payments made by the end of December were met for the Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) and Land Management Options (LMO).

Last September, the Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing set out a schedule of key dates for Scottish rural payments in an announcement to the Parliament.

He promised that the majority of payments under BES, AECS, rural priorities, FGS and LMO would be made by October for the 2016 scheme year. In addition, he pledged that 95% of the total value of payments would be made for those schemes by the end of December 2017.

In total, £4.5m in rural payments in the schemes mentioned have yet to be issued to almost 600 claimants. There is £2.7m outstanding to over 190 claimants in the 2016 Beef Efficiency Scheme (see table 1). Meanwhile there is £1m outstanding to over 90 claimants in the Agri-Environment Climate Scheme.

The news has been described as an “embarrassment”, causing untold damage to the rural economy in Scotland, according to Scottish Conservative shadow rural affairs secretary Peter Chapman MSP.

“The SNP’s handling of farm payments over the past few years has been nothing short of abysmal,” Chapman said.

“Once again we see them missing deadlines for distributing millions of pounds worth of vital funds to Scottish farmers. Farmers across the country will be understandably furious at the current situation, and it’s time the SNP finally got a grip of this,” said Chapman.