Scottish Government was repeatedly told about problems with the new Rural Payments and Services website but chose to ignore them, claims a developer who worked on the site.
John Dunning, who worked as a contracted developer on the system between September 20, 2014 and March 20, 2015, claims he and other contractors were threatened with dismissal or terminated for raising concerns about problems with the site.
Countless changes to staff working on the system and to the management team leading the work have also added to the problem, claims Mr Dunning.
The Scottish Government has dismissed the claims, but correspondence seen by the Press and Journal reveals Mr Dunning raised concerns as far back as December last year.
In an email to government officials on December 31, 2014, Mr Dunning wrote: “Contractors have complained that when testing the AFRC system they have been threatened with the sack if they report faults or defects.”
While, on March 19, he wrote to government saying: “The system has not successfully processed any SAFs yet. They are all in draft mode which means that the farmers gave up.
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did start reporting this in December and nobody wanted to hear the warnings. Also, a large number of people who were removed from the project also raised these issues and were dismissed for doing so. Likewise, I reported that some people were threatened with being dismissed for raising bugs and defects on the system.
“If action had been taken earlier, then instead of reports of how bad the system is now, there would have been praise. We were only trying to save you money, save your system and deliver what the farmers wanted.”
Responding to the allegations a Scottish Government spokesman said: “We always acknowledged it would be challenging to implement the new system. The Scottish Government maintains close and regular monitoring of all activities and we continue to recognise and address performance issues. The constant review of the system and changes being brought into place, against a tight deadline is testament to the pragmatic way the programme is delivering to meet the Scottish Governments EU obligations.”
He said government was aware of problems with the system.
“We have a team that is constantly monitoring the system and we are working flat out to sort out any issues that arise,” he added.
Meanwhile, sharing his thoughts for the future of the system, Mr Dunning said: “The system is not fit for purpose. That is a consensus of the workers who worked on it, but if you tried to raise issues you were dismissed because they [government] didn’t want to hear it. The project as it stands at the moment is little more than a web site that allows farmers to fill out a form and save the data. I can’t see how a bill of nearly £150million can possibly be justified for what has been delivered so far, but the project is now too big for Scottish Government to admit it’s going wrong and I think they will plough on until they are forced to abandon it.”
Earlier this week, farm minister Richard Lochhead announced plans to extend the SAF deadline by one month to June 15.
He said the extended deadline would benefit farmers and crofters who have raised concerns over the new application system, and said government would work hard to respond to issues raised about the IT system.
As of April 13, 16,015 farm businesses had registered on the system – registration is required in order to receive the support regardless of whether or not the SAF is submitted online or as a paper form.
When asked how many farmers had started to process their SAF online, the government spokesman said: “So far 4492 farmers and started to process their SAF online around 10% more than at the same period last year. We do not hold records for the number of paper forms handed out to farmers.”