Rural Payments Wales (RPW): Service update and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) 2014 – supported projects: January 2023

Your EMFF grant funding has been budgeted for the financial years approved as part of your project Delivery Profile.

The Welsh Government 2022/23 Financial Year runs from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023, and all projects with a final claim in this Financial Year are expected to submit their final claim by 5 April 2023.

If you need to request an extension to the end date of your project, please e-mail the EMFF Mailbox at emffcommunications@gov.wales and request a project re-evaluation form.

All eligible project expenditure incurred in the 2022/23 Financial Year must be claimed by no later than 5 April 2023.

If you have a claim profiled for March 2023, RPW will invite your claim in the first week of March to allow you time to submit the claim by 5 April 2023.

Failure to claim all eligible project expenditure puts your grant funding at risk.

If you have more than one claim available (in status of Invited), we recommend you submit the most recent claim and request the older claim(s) to be cancelled.

If you have eligible project expenditure that could be claimed before the end of the Financial Year but are awaiting approval of a project re-evaluation, please follow the accrual guidance below if approval is not granted by the first week of March and you are not able to submit a claim by the 5 April 2023 deadline.

Failure to submit an accrual puts your grant funding at risk.

An accrual is required when:

• your 2022/23 Financial Year spend is not defrayed, for example you have invoices that are unpaid on 31 March 2023 or
• you are unable to submit a claim because you are waiting for
  • changes requested in a re-evaluation that affect your ability to claim,
  • or payment of a previous claim.

In these instances, you will need to accrue the unclaimed 22/23 spend by submitting the accrual evidence via your WEFO Online account/RPW on-line account by no later than 5 April 2023.

How to submit accrual via WEFO Online:

• gather all backing evidence for the unclaimed spend for example, scanned copies of invoices or timesheets
• enter the expenditure values in the Accruals Summary form
• log into your WEFO Online account
• guidance on how to upload a document in WEFO Online is available under How to use WEFO Online
• in the case name (project) select Claim Summary and open the most recent claim (any status)
• from the claim in the dropdown menu, select Claim Documents where you can upload the Accrual Summary form and backing evidence
• if you do not provide backing evidence, we may be unable to accrue this spend and the grant funding may be at risk
• document name should be Case ID EMFF Accrual - March 2023, for example 98251 EMFF Accrual - March 2023

How to submit accrual via RPW Online:

• gather all backing evidence for the unclaimed spend for example, scanned copies of invoices or timesheets
• enter the expenditure values in the Accruals Summary form
• log into your RPW on-line account
• Submit the summary form and backing evidence via your messages.  Please title the message ‘EMFF 2022/2023 Accruals’
• if you do not provide backing evidence, we may be unable to accrue this spend, and the grant funding may be at risk

RPW will not make payment to you based on the accrual as we only make payments for claims submitted via the claim functionality in WEFO Online/RPW Online.

We expect you to claim the accrued expenditure in WEFO Online/RPW Online no later than 30 April 2023.

You can claim it in WEFO Online/RPW Online as part of your next claim when:

• you have defrayed it and have the claim evidence such as invoices and bank statements
• the previous claim is authorised or paid or the re-evaluation is completed; whichever scenario is applicable

The EMFF 2014-2020 programme will close on 31 December 2023. 

You are now approaching the final months for your project. You must deliver your agreed project objectives and submit your final claim by the deadline agreed in your Delivery Profile.