Scottish farmers are promised to receive a new Basic Payment Scheme loan, at 90% of the farmers’ estimated entitlement for 2017. Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday this week, Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy Fergus Ewing said that the loan is scheduled to hit farmers’ bank accounts in the first two weeks of November this year. The 10% balance is scheduled to go out in March.

“We are absolutely committed to ensuring that CAP entitlements are paid promptly and in full, and I am clear that we have not achieved that aim in recent times,” Ewing said.

“I need to rebuild farmers’ confidence and that can only be gained through hard work.”

Farmers will receive letters at the end of the month, offering the new interest-free loans. Approximately 74% of Scottish farmers opted for the loan scheme for 2016 BPS payments.

As part of the Government’s new CAP stabilisation plan, Ewing also pre-announced loans for next year’s LFASS payments.

The aim is to ensure that eligible recipients will get 90% of their payment as scheduled in May 2018, regardless of whether there is a ‘slippage’ in the preparation timelines of the IT system.

After visiting a number of the RPID offices over the summer, Ewing was keen to emphasise the ‘strengthening’ and ‘governance improvements’ that have been made to improve service to farmers.

There are also plans in place to hold one-on-one sessions to help show farmers how to apply for their CAP money online, however Ewing said he was adamant that online application would not become compulsory, despite EU targets. While the future of payments post Brexit remains unclear, Ewing described the IT and digitalised mapping system that has been developed to process EU payments as a “considerable asset” for Scotland.