Question reference: S5W-31425
- Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 26 August 2020 Registered interest
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Current status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 8 September 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-30897 by Fergus Ewing on 20 August 2020, whether the Rural Payments and Services CAP digital platform was able to assess and process all payments without overrides or manual intervention; how many staff were required to process payments in (a) 2017, (b) 2018, (c) 2019 and (d) 2020, and whether the loans are processed via the Rural Payments and Services CAP digital platform, or are processed via a separate digital platform.
Answer
The Rural Payments and Services system was designed to require consideration or confirmation from staff under certain conditions. There will always be a proportion of cases that require staff intervention. As with any IT system we continue to make improvements to make Rural Payments and Services more efficient and simple to use and cater for changing circumstances.
The teams that deal with payment processing within Rural Payments and Inspections Division (Area Offices, Scheme Management and Finance) are multi-functional with all team members contributing to payment processing at different times throughout the year as well as carrying out other duties. The total headcount for these teams at April in each of the years were as follows:
2020 - 441
2019 - 454
2018 - 425
2027 - 436
Loans are not processed via the Rural Payments and Services system but are made through a pre-existing payment enabled solution.