The Integrated Administration And Control System: explanatory booklet

REDUCTIONS, EXCLUSIONS AND CORRECTION OF ERRORS

Online guidance on this section can be found at www.scotland.gov.uk/SAF07/reduction

Introduction

21. If we receive your SAF form late (after 15 May 2007), or we find an inaccuracy, or you do not meet the cross compliance rules or the set-aside management rules, we will apply reductions and exclusions according to the scheme regulations.

22. Except in cases of force majeure, exceptional circumstances or obvious error, we have no discretion to waive these sanctions.

Force Majeure and Exceptional Circumstances

23. We may accept that a farmer was prevented from meeting certain obligations due to either force majeure or exceptional circumstances. If so, we may not apply penalties. Force majeure is defined as "unusual circumstances, outside a farmer's control, the consequences of which, in spite of all due care, could not be avoided except at the cost of excessive sacrifice on their part". Examples of force majeure and exceptional circumstances include:

• The death of the farmer;
• The long term professional incapacity of the farmer;
• A severe natural disaster affecting the holding's agricultural land;
• The accidental destruction of livestock buildings; and
• An epizootic disease affecting livestock.

24. To apply for force majeure or exceptional circumstances, you must write to your SEERAD Area Office within 10 working days of the event and provide as much evidence as you can to support your case, including proof that the event occurred. We will consider each case on its merits.

Obvious Error

25. You can correct a mistake in your SAF at any time, if we can accept it as an obvious error under the European Commission regulations, and if we are satisfied that you have acted in good faith and there is no risk of fraud. If we accept a mistake as an obvious error, we will not reduce your payment. The following types of error may be considered obvious:

• Clerical errors that are obvious when we examine your claim form:
  - Erroneous statistics;
  - Arithmetical mistakes;
  - Errors detected from an apparent contradiction during a more in-depth examination (manual or computerised) of the claim;
  - Inconsistencies between the information provided on the same form (for example, a parcel of land declared twice in a single claim);
  - Inconsistencies between supporting documents and the claim form;
  - Parcels declared for two types of use (for example, set-aside/protein crops).
• Errors detected during the cross check of the claim with databases such as the Field Identification System:
  - Figures reversed (for example, Farm Code 999/1234 instead of 999/1324);
  - Errors in the Field Identification Number;
  - Number of a neighbouring parcel, resulting from a map reading error.

The above examples show the types of error that we may accept. We will penalise errors if we do not consider them obvious.

To avoid a delay in payment or a penalty, please fill in your claim accurately. Keep a copy of your SAF and re-check it for errors after submission.

Amendments and Additions

26. You can amend your SAF up to and including 31 May 2007 to:

• Add agricultural parcels of land;
• Change the use of land parcels; and
• Change the schemes claimed for individual parcels of land.

27. Up to 31 May 2007, we can accept amendments to your SAF without reducing your payments. If we receive amendments on or after 1 June 2007, we will apply a 1% late submission penalty to each field amended, for each working day the amendment is late. We will not accept any amendments after 11 June 2007.

Notified Error

28. You may correct errors in your SAF at any time if:

• you notify your SEERAD Area Office in writing, and
• we have not told you of the error first, and
• we have not told you of an intended inspection, which subsequently reveals the error.

Withdrawal

29. You can withdraw all or part of your SAF at any time if:

• you apply in writing to your SEERAD Area Office, identifying the field, the area in question and the relevant field data sheet, and
• we have not told you of an error in your SAF, and
• we have not told you of an intended inspection, which subsequently reveals an error in the area you wish to withdraw.

Transfer of Land

30. Your SAF must show the land which you farm at 15 May 2007. If, during the IACS year, you take over the whole of a holding which has been claimed or declared by another farmer in 2006, we may be able to transfer the whole area on his SAF to you to support your claims. Your SEERAD Area Office can provide more information and a transfer application form.

Late Applications

31. We can accept your SAF up to 25 calendar days after the closing date of 15 May 2007. EC regulations require that we reject SAFs we receive more than 25 calendar days late (that is, after 11 June 2007). This affects all schemes covered by the SAF except LMCMS; we will reject any LMCMS application we receive after 15 May 2007.

32. Except in cases of force majeure or exceptional circumstances, we will reduce your payment by 1% for each working day your SAF is late during the 25 calendar day period, after the 15 May deadline. If we receive your SAF more than 25 calendar days late, and we reject your form, you will be unable to establish any SFPS entitlements allocated to you for 2007 and we can not pay you for the SFPS in 2007.

Example
If we receive your application on 25 May it is 8 working days late. Entitlements will be activated but you will lose 8% of the value of your activated entitlements for 2007.

Failure to declare all the agricultural land on the holding

33. If you do not declare all the agricultural land on your holding on your SAF (including all owned and rented land, not just land on which you are claiming SFPS), we will reduce your SFPS payment. Use this check to ensure you have entered all your land: you will have declared all your land if the field is entered on your Field Data Sheet and it shows the total area of the field.

34. If there is a difference between the total area you declare on your SAF and the total agricultural land on your holding that you should have declared, we will reduce your payment using the following formula:

Difference	Reduction
Up to 3%	No reduction in payment
More than 3% and up to 20%	1% reduction
21% to 50%	2% reduction
More than 50%	3% reduction

• We will apply penalties if, at inspection, we find undeclared fields.
• If you have any doubt about what areas you should declare, you should seek professional advice. Roads, Yards, Buildings and Water are ineligible and should NOT be claimed or declared.

Discrepancies in areas declared

35. We do not pay on an area greater than the area you declare on your SAF. If we find that the area of a crop group is greater than the area you declared on your SAF, we will pay on the area you declared. For the SAF, the crop groups are:

• SFPS use, including set-aside;
• Energy crops;
• Protein crops; and
• Nuts.

36. If we find a difference between the number of SFPS payment entitlements you hold and the number of eligible hectares you declared on your SAF, we will calculate your SFPS payment on the lower number.

37. You must declare sufficient land to match the number of set aside entitlements you hold. If you do not, we will reduce your other eligible land by the shortfall but you will not be paid on the shortfall on set aside entitlements, nor will these entitlements be counted as having been used in the scheme year. If we find that land you declared as SFPS set-aside was not set-aside, we will deduct it from the overall area you declared.

38. Within the same crop group, we can offset an over declaration of one land parcel's area against an under declaration of another's.

Overdeclaration Penalties

39. These rules will apply in cases where the number of hectares of eligible land found is less than the number of hectares declared as part of the Single Application Form.

40. Whether penalties are appropriate depends on a comparison between the number of hectares of eligible land declared, the number of hectares found and the number of entitlements held. For example:
- If the land found is less than the land declared but the land declared is equal to or less than the number of entitlements held, penalties will be applied based on the difference between land declared and found.
- If the land found is less than the land declared but the land declared is greater than the number of entitlements held, penalties will be applied based on the difference between the land found and the number of entitlements held.
- If the land found is less than the land declared but the land found is greater than the number of entitlements held, no penalties will be applied.

41. If you declare more land than you require to activate your payment entitlements, providing all the land declared is found to be eligible, we will not apply any overdeclaration penalties. For example:

Number of entitlements held = 10
Number of eligible hectares declared = 12
Number of hectares found = 12
Land found is higher than the number of entitlements held therefore no penalties are applicable.

42. Even if the land found is less than the number of entitlements held, we will only apply an overdeclaration penalty based on the difference. For example:

Number of eligible hectares declared = 15
Number of entitlements held = 14
Number of hectares found = 12
Penalty will be based on the 2ha shortfall.

43. If the area you declare on your SAF exceeds the area we find (for all crop groups) by more than 30%, we will make no payment for the SFPS that year, nor will we make a payment for any other scheme covered by the SAF.

44. If the area you declare on your SAF exceeds the area we find (for all crop groups) by more than 50%, as well as making no payment that year, we will reduce your payment in the next calendar year by an amount which corresponds to the difference in payments between the area you declared and the area we found. If we cannot take the full amount from your payment in the next calendar year, we will take the remainder from payments in the two subsequent years.

Non-food set-aside and Energy Crop Scheme

45. If you fail to deliver the correct quantity of crops grown for non-food set-aside or under the ECS, you will be subject to the same reductions as set out above. The area is calculated by multiplying the area of land cultivated for these crops by the percentage shortfall in the delivery of the crop.

Intentional over declaration

46. If you intentionally over declare land within a crop group, and the difference between the area you declared and the area we found is 20% or less of the area found, we will make no payment for that crop group that year. If the difference is more than 20%, as well as making no payment that year, we will reduce your payment in the next calendar year by an amount which corresponds to the difference in payments between the area you declared and the area we found. If we cannot take the full amount from your payment in the next calendar year, we will take the remainder from payments in the two subsequent years.

47. A false declaration made intentionally or recklessly is a criminal offence which carries a maximum sentence of an unlimited fine or two years imprisonment. If we find that you have intentionally or recklessly made a false declaration you will be liable to prosecution.

Reductions for cross compliance failure

48. These are detailed in the Cross Compliance Notes for Guidance.

Accumulation of reductions

49. We will reduce payments in the following order. We will base successive reductions on the amount created by the previous reduction:

• late submission;
• under declaration of land;
• voluntary modulation;
• national modulation;
• cross compliance; and
• environmental, linear and payment penalties.