Some farmers in the south west have revealed they are still owed tens of thousands of pounds by the government for work carried out on environmental schemes.

The National Farmer's Union (NFU) is now calling on the government to pay farmers the money they are owed for extra environmental work "without delay."

Hundreds of farms across the region are part of 'stewardship' agreements, which pay farmers for delivering additional work including caring for hedgerows, planting wildflower margins in fields, managing flood risks and providing nesting plots for birds.

Following an application process, agreements generally begin in January, with payments made in two parts in November and the following June after work has been carried out.

However in the second half of 2017 an attempt to update the maps used to record which hedges and boundaries are included in the scheme backfired, leading to what the NFU calls "scores of errors."

At the same time, Defra announced changes to the scheme for 2018 to make it more 'streamlined'.

Between them, the errors embroiled the 2018 application process in "confusion" and caused long delays in payments to farmers who signed up in 2017. According to the NFU, hundreds of farmers are still waiting to be paid.

Mark Pope, a farmer and chairman of the NFU’s environment forum, said farmers were growing increasingly frustrated at having to wait for an unfixed length of time to be paid large sums of money for work that had already been done, on top of day-to-day farming work.

He said: "As farmers, if we enter into a contract it will say we agree to pay someone by a particular time and then we will stick to it. In fact if you don’t, you will soon be in trouble. But we have to sign contracts with no payment date.

"The environmental work we have done costs money, having to wait for sums of £10,000 to £20,000 is not uncommon and that has a big impact on cash flow and the bottom line.

"If after Brexit we are moving to a situation where more emphasis is going to be placed on environmental schemes, then I have to say this situation is certainly not going to inspire people to sign up."

Mr Pope said he believed the problem was one of chronic under-resourcing.

The NFU is now calling for:

n Full payment to be made now, rather than a 75 per cent payment in November, followed by 25 per cent in June

n Extending the May 15 claim deadline for those waiting for 2018 agreement offers

n 2018 applicants to have more time to submit soil samples, currently expected by May 15

n Guidance to agreement holders/applicants on dealing with the impact of remapping