I registered online, but it took me two goes, despite my having 45 years of experience of working with computers and a fairly simple croft, which, with two and a half pages of fields and no greening, is fairly straightforward. I looked at IACS and read reports in the press. Given my knowledge of introducing new computer systems, I made a positive decision not to use the computer system and just fill in the paper forms, as we have done in the past. They were a bit different. It took a couple of hours, sitting down at the kitchen table with the maps and the forms. That was fine.
Having taken the forms to the Golspie office and got a receipt for them, I received an email saying that there was a communication for me. That Friday evening I tried several times to log on to the system and failed. I tried and failed several times on the Saturday and first thing on Sunday morning. On the second attempt on Sunday morning I could log on. Eventually I found my way through the screens to the communication, which was, as I suspected, just an acknowledgement that I had handed in the forms. I received a paper copy in the post on the Monday morning, so I had received an email, the communication was on the system and I had received a paper copy as well.
As I said, when we knew that we were coming here we sent an email round our members to see what their experiences were. Of the people who replied, 31 per cent of them—19 people—used an agent. I find it a bit worrying if the system is so difficult that people with crofts have to use agents. Twenty-seven people said that they filled in the forms online, and only three of them did not criticise or have problems with the system to some extent. Fourteen—a quarter of the people—filled in the forms on paper. Two people said that the system was too confusing and as a result they were not claiming, which I find very worrying. One of those respondents and his wife are both fairly sharp people; we have a problem if they cannot understand what is going on.
I will quote some of the responses that we received:
“I tried to use the online system. Too complicated. Error messages at every step. Gave up after spending far too much time on it.”
That person was happy to use the old system. They also said:
“Went to the local RPID office (always helpful) and got a paper form ... Pity they did not test the system with some real users before going live”.
Another person said:
“I used the online system, it took 6 attempts to complete, I had to delete the first 5 attempts as there were too many errors, I also helped a further 5 people to do their IACS forms and each application took one hour.”
One hour is quite good, from our experiences.
Someone else said:
“Apart from being so slow as to be worse than useless the system is not at all intuitive”—
that has come up before—
“and you seem to need to know what you are doing before your start; there are no hints and tips as to what you need to do and does not seem to have been designed with any input from an actual ‘user’.”
Another respondent said:
“At the second attempt, I filled it out easily enough after I stopped worrying about perfection.”
Someone else said:
“I would never attempt it myself to much chance to make a mess. It is fundamentally wrong that people find the process so difficult they have to pay a consultant/agent”.