Rural Payments Wales (RPW): January 2023 service update regarding RPW online based Rural Development Programme (RDP) projects

The deadline for all requests for changes to approved projects (re-evaluations) is 31 January 2023. No project change requests will be accepted after this date.

See the November 2022 update for the circumstances where a change request is required and the process for requesting a change.

All projects with a last financial claim in this Financial Year (April 2022 to March 2023) 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, you will need to submit a project change request by 31 January 2023.

The Welsh Government 2022/23 financial year runs from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

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

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 in 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 the expenditure register or a project re-evaluation, please follow the accrual instructions below if approval is not granted by the first week of March.

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,
  • approval of your competitive tendering expenditure register and/or record,
  • 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 RPW Online account no later than 5 April 2023.

If you do not provide supporting 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 RPW Online.

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

You can claim it in 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 competitive tendering is approved, or the re-evaluation is completed; whichever scenario is applicable

The RDP 2014-2020 programme will close on 31 December 2023 and 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 of 7 July 2023. 

All enquiries and documentary evidence should be directed and submitted to: 

• the RPW Customer Contact Centre, or 
• your secure RPW online account

If you are unable to access your RPW online account please contact the RPW Customer Contact Centre immediately.

Our RPW Customer Contact Centre operators continue to work from home. This may affect the speed of response to some enquiries. 

The Customer Contact Centre telephone service is operating as follows:

Where possible, routine project enquiries or requests should be submitted via the RPW online account which is available 24 hours a day.