Rural Payments Wales (RPW): service update and Rural Development Programme supported projects: January 2023

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 and process for requesting a change.

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 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, 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.

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 the expenditure register or 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,
  • 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 WEFO Online account no later than 5 April 2023.

How to submit accrual in 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 RDP Accrual - March 2023, for example 98251 RDP Accrual - March 2023

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.

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

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

In our June 2022 update we explained that the RDP 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 of 7 July 2023.