Implementation of the payments in England has been impaired by problems at the Rural Payments Agency. Payments under the scheme were intended to be made by around January 2006, but by December 2006 some 2% of claims still remained unsettled. Payments amounted to £1.5 billion distributed amongst 115,000 claimants, though most of the money went to relatively few of the claimants (according to the size of their holdings). Difficulties in implementation included double the number of expected claimants, as rules of the new scheme allowed many more people with relatively small areas of land to claim.