Farron urges Minister to keep to the right path on farm mapping

Tim Farron MP has submitted a Parliamentary question to the new DEFRA Minister, Hilary Benn, calling on him to ensure that the farm re-mapping exercise due next year will not lead to the same litany of errors as the last one.

In 2005 the Rural Land Register maps sent out to farmers as part of the process of establishing entitlement for single farm payments were frequently wrong. Mr Farron dealt with dozens of local cases where farmers were denied their payments or given inaccurate payments because of avoidable errors in mapping.

As the Rural Payments Agency seeks to launch a re-mapping exercise in 2008/09, Mr Farron wants to ensure that farm land is accurately mapped so that farmers get what they are entitled to on time.

Tim Farron said:

"It's encouraging to see that the RPA has announced that the register will be based against the latest Ordnance Survey information, but we must ensure that farmers can have complete confidence that the re-mapping exercise will be accurate and that it will not lead to inexcusable hold-ups in crucial farm payments.

"I'm asking Hilary Benn to make a formal statement telling us that the government has learnt the right lessons from the mistakes made in 2005 and promising us that those mistakes will not be repeated."