Confirm your information and claim
To confirm the information in your claim is correct, check it before you submit it online.
When you’ve completed your claim you need to check that the information in it is correct. To do this, create or update your claim summary by following the instructions in the ‘Complete’ section under Claim Summary. Then if needed, you can go back into your claim and change it.
If you decide that you do not want to submit your claim, click ‘Withdraw’. A message appears to check that you do want to withdraw the claim.
Click ‘No’ if you do not want to withdraw it.
Click ‘Yes’ if you do want to withdraw it. You’ll see a screen message confirming that you’ve successfully withdrawn your claim. This claim will not be submitted to RPA, and you cannot open it again but you can create a new claim while the relevant green button is available.
Click ‘Back’ to return to the claim screen (where you’ll see the claim status is now ‘Withdrawn’ and the claim is no longer ‘Active’).
If you have checked your claim summary and the information in your capital claim is correct, click ‘Submit’.
You’ll be asked to confirm that you’ve completed all the sections of the claim before you submit. Click ‘Cancel’ if you want to return to your claim to amend something, or click ‘OK’ if you want to continue to submit your claim.
The screen will confirm that your claim has ‘submitted successfully’ and RPA has received your claim.
Click ‘Print’ if you want to print and keep the confirmation for your records.
Click ‘Back’ to return to the claims screen (where you’ll see that the status of your claim has changed to ‘Submitted’. It also shows the date and time your claim was submitted).
For more information read the ‘Supporting documents and evidence’ section.
Claim fails to submit
If your claim fails to submit, a screen message will tell you this. It will also show the reasons why it did not submit with a red warning box beside it.
Read this message fully by using the scroll bar to the right of the message. You may find it useful to print and save the message. You may be able to do this by clicking the button on the right side of the mouse or touchpad, and choosing the print or save options.
Click ‘Back’ to return to the claims screen.
Check and correct all of the sections detailed in the message before you ‘Submit’ your claim again.
The information below will tell you what you need to do before you submit your claim again:
No claimed items entered
You need to add at least 1 capital item to your claim. Read the ‘Add standard cost items’ and the ‘Add actual cost items’ sections for more information.
Claim profile form in Other Claim Information is not complete
You have either not answered the question under ‘Claim Profile’, or you’ve answered ‘Yes’ to the question but have not entered the details in the box provided. Read the ‘Claim profile’ section for more information.
Other public funding form in Other Claim Information is not complete
You have either not answered the question under ‘Other Public Funding’, or you’ve answered ‘Yes’ but have not entered the details in the box provided. Read the ‘Other public funding’ section for more information.
Supporting documentation form in Other Claim Information is not complete
You have not answered all of the questions under ‘Supporting documents’. Read the ‘Supporting documents’ section for more information.
You must select ‘Yes’ in the Declarations section to be able to proceed with your claim
You’ve not answered ‘Yes’ to confirm that you accept the declaration under ‘Declarations’. Read the ‘Declarations’ section for more information.
After you’ve submitted your claim and returned to the claim screen, you may see 2 green buttons beside your submitted claim details.
Summary and Evidence checklist
You may have already generated these at the ‘Complete your claim’ section. You should ‘generate’ and ‘download’ them again after you submit your claim to make sure they contain everything you’ve put into your claim. The checklist tells you which evidence you need to submit with your claim and which you need to keep until you’re asked for it. As explained earlier in the ‘Complete’ section. If the evidence checklist is not visible on your screen read Countryside Stewardship grants on GOV.UK for more information about evidence.
You may want to print or save your summary to keep it for your records.
Read the ‘Supporting documents and evidence’ section for details about how to send your supporting documents to RPA.
RPA must receive your online claim, supporting documents, and any evidence that needs to be submitted, by the ‘Claim by’ date outlined in your agreement document. Late claims will be rejected.
Depending on the items you’re claiming for, the supporting documents and evidence you need to send to RPA may vary. Therefore, it’s important that you read about each item in the relevant scheme manual and Countryside Stewardship grants on GOV.UK.
Some evidence you must submit to RPA and some evidence you must keep until you’re asked for it. Your evidence checklist will show this. If the checklist is not visible on your screen you can read the same information for each individual item in Countryside Stewardship grants on GOV.UK.
You may need to send:
- receipted invoices/receipts
- photographs at different stages and on completing the work
- contacts or other documents outlining the technical specification of the work.
All invoices you send to us must be signed and dated by the contractor to prove they have received your payment. This is known as ‘receipted’.
Proof of payment can be any of the following:
- till receipts
- internet purchased receipts
- bank and or credit card statements where necessary
- schedule of works/timesheets, where you have used your own labour/machinery and none of the above are available.
Full payment must have left your bank account before you submit your Capital claim, so the date of receipting (on invoices) and/or transaction date (on other eligible proof of payment) must be before the Capital claim submission date.
For more information read the ‘Evidence required to support your claim’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK.
All photographs (digital and paper) must meet the standards set out in the ‘Photographic evidence’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK.
Use the Ordnance Survey (OS) map sheet reference and National Grid reference for the field parcel, followed by the relevant proposed or implemented option or capital item code and, if more than one image is required, the image number.
The OS map sheet reference and National Grid reference should relate to the field parcel on which the feature, multi-year management option or capital item is sited or for boundary features the adjacent field parcel. For example, if you need to take before and after photographs to show evidence that works have taken place for Gateway relocation (RP2), label the image as XX12345678_ RP2_1 and XX12345678_RP2_2. If there is no relevant land parcel reference, include a clear identifiable description such as Farmyard_RP22_1.
Save digital images under the label outlined above. If posting printed photographs, clearly write the label on the reverse of each one, detailing the Ordnance Survey (OS) map sheet reference and National Grid reference for the field parcel, the implemented capital item code, date, Agreement Holder name and SBI.
To send by email
Scan your supporting documents/evidence and email them to ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk using ‘CS Capital Claim Evidence_[Your SBI]_[Claim Reference, if known]’ as the email subject heading.
Make sure your emails are not over 32MB as this is the largest email size we can receive.
Do not include links to cloud storage, for example Dropbox or Google Drive, as we cannot accept documents or evidence this way.
For security reasons, do not send discs, USB pen drives or other external storage media.
You can send digital photos by email, but do not send scans of printed photos as the quality is not good enough. Read the ‘Photographic Evidence Quality’ section of the relevant CS manual on GOV.UK for more information.
To send by post
You can also send supporting documents/evidence by post to:
Rural Payments Agency
(Countryside Stewardship)
PO Box 324
Worksop
S95 1DF
Remember to put your SBI, agreement number on all documents and, where possible, include the claim reference.
We recommend you get proof of postage.
We’ll contact you if we have any queries.
We’ll make all payments directly into the bank account we have details for, so it’s important that this information is up to date.
After you’ve submitted your claim, you can check the progress of it in the Rural Payments service. As your claim progresses, the claim status will change in the Countryside Stewardship claims screen:
Submitted
You’ve submitted your claim online and now need to send your supporting documents and any evidence that needs to be submitted, to reach RPA before the ‘claim by’ date in your agreement document.
Claim validation
Your claim, supporting documents, and any evidence that needed to be submitted are being checked to confirm eligibility.
Final checking
Your claim is waiting for final check and authorisation to pay.
Preparing for payment*
Your claim is being sent for payment, or has been paid.
*The claim status will still show ‘Preparing for payment’ after it has been paid. Please check your nominated bank account to confirm if payment has been received. If your claim has been at ‘Preparing for Payment’ for longer than one month and you have not received your payment contact RPA using details from the ‘More Information and Contact details’ section.