The Farmers' Union of Wales today warned farmers to double check their Single Application Form (SAF) acknowledgment slips after a series of computer scanning errors had been discovered.
"SAF scanning errors have been discovered by a number of our county executive offices across Wales and had these gone unnoticed our members could have lost significant sums of money," said FUW's Carmarthenshire county executive officer Meinir Bartlett.
"We are particularly concerned at the sheer number of errors that we have noticed on acknowledgement slips sent out by the Assembly Government to our members. Thankfully our staff and members have spotted these by cross-checking them against photocopies of their original SAF forms"
One discrepancy involving a Carmarthenshire FUW member showed a 5.28ha field scanned as 1.00ha, and out of a total of 74 field entries in the county, there were 12 scanning errors.
The breakdown of errors is: crosses declaring the intention to claim Single Payment on four fields not scanned; cross declaring the intention to claim Tir Mynydd on one field not scanned; details of field "statuses" not scanned on five occasions; and declaration of an intention to claim Glastir not scanned on two occasions.
"Had these errors by the Welsh Assembly Government not been picked up, they could have led to significant losses for the businesses concerned," said Mrs Bartlett.
"Every year the FUW deals with members who have lost significant sums of money due to minor errors on extremely complicated forms and some end up losing sums that are equivalent to their entire annual incomes.
"Very few of those people get their money back due to the strict enforcement of EU rules relating to obvious errors and exceptional circumstances.
"We fully appreciate that such errors are a part and parcel of normal life and that no system is infallible. But when it comes to farmers making equivalent errors, they have the book thrown at them and can be fined like criminals, even for placing a single tick in the wrong box.
"For those who have lost thousands of pounds and had the viability of their businesses put on the line due to errors that everyone - including officials - agrees were accidental, this will smack of one rule for them and one rule for us.
"But the bottom line is that this is firm evidence of the need to treat errors as errors, and allow them to be corrected without fining people, no matter whether the errors are made by farmers or the Welsh Assembly Government."