The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has been urged to do more to avoid a repeat of the "significant financial hardship and anxiety" faced by farmers still waiting for delayed European Union funds.
Under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, the government pays out around £1.8bn a year to English farmers, both through direct income support and through funding for rural development programmes.
But changes in EU rules and a series of setbacks with a key digital scheme – which at one point had to be shelved in favour of a "paper-assisted" system – led to a sharp dip in performance which left many farmers out of pocket.
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A new report by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee says an "extremely strong performance" in 2014 – when the RPA made 95% of direct payments to farmers in early December – was not matched under the new system, with just 35% of BPS payments made in early December 2015.
According to the latest figures provided by the RPA, more than 90% of the farmers who were awaiting last year's payments have now received their full claim, while the department says the rest have received bridging payments to plug the shortfall, under plans announced by ministers last month.
But while the committee welcomes the introduction of these new part-payments to farmers in hardship, it asks "why funds could not have been released much earlier on in the payment window", and urges "much better" performance from the RPA in 2016.
They also urge the department to do more to keep farmers in the loop about the progress of their outstanding payments, after trade body the NFU criticised the RPA's customer service and said the government remained "hopelessly silent" on some claims.
The committee says the RPA "must communicate clearly with its customers and ensure that it is appropriately resourced to deal with queries and complaints".
It adds: "The RPA should drive better performance by building, publishing and reporting on a set of key performance indicators for communications.
"These must be tailored to specific situations, but could include targets for wait times on phone calls, the percentage of queries completely resolved following a phone interaction, response times to incoming written communications and other, more general customer satisfaction metrics."
Launching the report, committee chair Neil Parish said farmers were already facing "extreme hardship" as a result of low produce prices.
He added: "Many producers rely on CAP payments to pay their bills so it is unacceptable that farmers are left uncertain over when their payments will arrive.
"The RPA did decide to make bridging payments to unpaid farmers in April, which were welcome, but it is disappointing that it took so long for them to be issued.”
Earlier this year, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) pinned some of the blame for the delayed payments on a clash of cultures between senior leaders at the RPA and the Government Digital Service, which was brought in to oversee the new digital system.
PAC chair Meg Hillier said it was "frankly embarrassing to learn of senior and highly paid civil servants arguing to the detriment of hard-pressed farmers", and Grimshaw told the EFRA committee that "all four senior officers" given responsibility for the programme must share responsibility for its failings.