Defra and GDS slammed for 'ineffective collaboration' for £154m CAP programme

NAO says increasing costs and leadership changes are some of the reasons why the Common Agricultural Policy programme has failed to live up to expectations

The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Rural Payments Agency and Government Digital Service (GDS) have all been slammed by the National Audit Office (NAO) for their poor attempt to collaborate for the Common Agricultural Policy Delivery Programme (CAP programme).

The programme aims to develop new systems and processes to support the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in England. It was established in 2012 to address previous failings in how the CAP was delivered.

The NAO said that the original vision and design of the programme was too narrow; it focused on procuring IT systems and did not set out the wider organisational transformation required.

It found that the programme has been beset by a number of changes in leadership -with four senior responsible owners within the space of a year - that caused uncertainty and confusion for its staff.

"The department (Defra) failed to prevent counter-productive behaviours, with deep rifts in working relationships and inappropriate behaviour at the senior leadership level at many stages of the programme's three-year history," the NAO said.

To compound its problems, GDS didn't provide the support needed when the Cabinet Office applied spending controls back in 2013.

The NAO suggested that GDS had committed to reducing overall costs for the programme, improving the delivery confidence of the programme and building the department's digital capability, but its support was reported to be "patchy" and with limited continuity in personnel.

In addition, GDS provided "limited continuity and insufficient insight into how to adopt agile on this scale" and "it was not able to identify and provide the systems integration skills required", the NAO said.

Defra took a damage limitation approach with the programme, when it finally acknowledged it would no longer be possible to achieve a fully online system. It had hoped that applicants would be able to register using the government's identity assurance system, Verify, from October 2014, but it had to switch to using the Rural Payments Agency's existing registration process, which was supported by drop-in centres and the RPA's telephone helpline.

In March, it withdrew the online application system and replaced it with "paper-assisted digital" applications. The NAO said this was a "speedy and effective change" to the programme that had increased the likelihood that the majority of farmers would receive their Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments in December.

But according to the NAO, the focus from Defra and the other bodies on resolving immediate issues has had an impact on the long-term goals of improving the service to farmers and minimising future European Commission penalties.

As part of its recommendations, the NAO said that Defra should review how it sought to address personal rifts in the programme, and should maintain a strong and consistent leadership for the programme. It said that the full costs and milestones should be made apparent to everyone involved in the programme, and that Defra must ensure that it focuses on longer-term priorities.

It said that central government should learn from what has gone wrong with the CAP programme and ensure that a more flexible approach is developed to deal with departments implementing them.

"The department, the Rural Payments Agency and GDS have not worked together effectively to deliver the Common Agricultural Policy delivery programme," said Amyas Morse, head of NAO.

"There are serious lessons in this episode for all three. This means that costs have increased and systems functionality has not improved at the rate expected, either in the back office or the user-facing front end. This does not represent value for money at this stage.

"One consequence of this is that the department faces difficulties paying farmers accurately and at the earliest opportunity. While the department is now making progress towards its target of paying BPS claims for the majority of farmers in December, significant challenges remain for the programme," he added.