Delayed payments to agriculture and farming payments: EIR release

Information requested

The number of delayed payments from the latest round of agriculture and farming payments paid out from 18 September 2022.

Payments from any these schemes or others can be included:

• Basic Payment Scheme (BPS)
• The Young Farmer Payment (YFP)
• Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme (SSBSS)
• Scottish Upland Sheep Support Scheme (SUSSS)

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

The answer to your question is that there are currently no delayed payments for the latest round of agriculture and farming support. As set out in retained EU legislation the payment window for these schemes does not close until 30 June 2023. The 2022 payment strategy is as follows:

Scheme Payments Commence
BPS/Greening/ YFP advance payments	Sep-22
BPS/Greening/YFP balance payments	Dec-22
Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme	Apr-23
Scottish Upland Sheep Support Scheme	May-23

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.