The Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) is urging Governments on
both sides of the England and Wales border to address serious
concerns about the future of Farm Business Tenancies (FBTs).
TFA National Chairman, Mark Coulman said “The fact that the
average length of an FBT is just under 40 months and with 89% of
all new FBTs let for five years or less displays a failure of
public policy. There is a growing consensus of view that the UK
Government needs to address the taxation framework within which
landlords make decisions to encourage longer tenancy lengths.
However, yet another Budget has passed by without the Chancellor
of the Exchequer taking on board the very reasonable taxation
changes promoted by the TFA that would do just that.”
Mr Coulman used his speech to this year’s TFA Annual General
Meeting to flag a warning about Government plans for schemes to
encourage tree planting and rewilding.
“Without sufficient safeguards, we could see a large amount of
land leave the tenanted sector of agriculture, particularly if
lucrative Government grants are available to landowners for wide
scale tree planting and rewilding. The TFA continues to argue
against the scale of this land-use change. It will have major
implications for the resilience of the tenanted sector of
agriculture. It also overstates the public benefits that would be
created in comparison to the public benefits available from the
continued use of land within agriculture,” said Mr Coulman.
At the same time, it will be important to ensure that farm
tenants are not excluded from participating in new Environmental
Land Management schemes in England and sustainable farming
initiatives in Wales. Many FBTs contain restrictive terms
preventing tenants from joining schemes without landlords’
consent. Coupled with their short-term nature, this could be a
major stumbling block to participation by farm tenants.
“The TFA is engaged in discussions with both the English and
Welsh Governments on these issues. However, in England, the
Government refused to allow safeguards to be written into the
agricultural act 2020 to allow FBT tenants to object to their
landlords’ unreasonable refusal to allow them access to new
schemes. It is also immensely disappointing that despite having
devolved responsibility for policy on agricultural tenancies, the
Welsh Government is slavishly following the policy on
agricultural tenancies in England. It has even cut and pasted
from speeches made by DEFRA Ministers in its recently published
Welsh White Paper,” said Mr Coulman.
“There is an unconscious bias within the policy teams of DEFRA
and Welsh Government to assume that all farmers are owner
occupiers. In fact, agriculture in England and Wales is
characterised by a complex web of land-use and land occupation
agreements. New Government schemes and initiatives must ensure to
target those who are the active managers of land, taking the
day-to-day entrepreneurial risk, rather than simply rewarding
land ownership,” said Mr Coulman.
