Applications under REPS are submitted to the Department's local farm development service, FDS, office and if everything is in order following an office check the FDS district superintendent recommends payment following which 50 per cent of the first year payment is made up front to the applicant. Five per cent of applications are subjected to a detailed prepayment check including on-farm inspection. For second and subsequent years applicants are issued with an application form for payment. Payment is processed following the receipt of this application from the participant. However, 55 per cent of participants are subject to an on-farm check prior to the issue of second or subsequent payments.
The target time to process a REPS applicant for payment, as set out in the Department's Customer Service Action Plan 1998-2000 is two months. The average time to process an application for first payment is less than four weeks; the processing of the 5 per cent selected for a prepayment check, naturally, takes longer. Following the receipt of applications from participants for second and subsequent payments 45 per cent are recommended for payment by the district superintendent generally within a few weeks. The remaining 55 per cent are subjected to on-farm checks which are taking an average eight weeks to do prior to going for payment.
In the case of non-compliant participants there are, of course, further delays in processing.
It should be acknowledged that the workload on REPS has increased significantly since its introduction in 1994, summarised as follows: