This blog is an unedited article written by TFA member, John Harris BSc FRICS ARAgS for the Spring 2026 edition of the Farms and Countryside Supplement of the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald.
John wrote:
Much has been written and discussed about the implications on the farming community of the removal of Agricultural Property Relief in the Budget of 2024. However, little has been mentioned about the effects that this may have on the tenanted farming sector.
In England, one third of agricultural land is occupied by tenants, on various types of Tenancy Agreements.
In Cumbria this figure is much higher and is therefore acutely relevant to our local community. It may be little known but over the last 18 months the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) has been pressing the Chancellor of the Exchequer, unsuccessfully to date, to support the tenanted sector by financing her new Inheritance Tax provisions. The Government have been lobbied intensely to offer exemption from Inheritance Tax on land that is let under secure tenancy agreements and long-term Farm Business Tenancies (FBTs). How would such an exemption benefit farming families and the wider Cumbrian community?
The partnership between landowners and tenants has been the backbone of agriculture for many centuries. Offering at least decade-long tenancies, provides farming families with opportunities to invest in their business, plan for the future and contribute to national food security whilst enhancing the environment. A family secure in their farm, send their children to the local school, use the village pub and shop, support the local Church and sit on the Parish Council. A farm abandoned to rewilding and Landscape Recovery will offer none of these benefits and the local community will be poorer for it. Many young families, who would embrace a life in agriculture, may not be able to own their own farm, but they can still have their own farm. Offering landowners Inheritance Tax relief on long-term Farm Business Tenancies, can only enhance the tenanted sector and all the benefits to our community set out above.
Commenting on his endeavours of the last 18 months, George Dunn the Chief Executive of the Tenant Farmers Association said: “In her Budget speech in October 2024, the Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about wanting to support hard-working family farms without seemingly understanding that many of those family farms will be relying upon agricultural tenancies for the operation of their businesses. Landowners offering only short-term opportunities should rightly be facing tax, but landowners offering long-term, sustainable tenancies should be supported. With the Finance Bill that will introduce the tax changes, entering its final stages in the House of Commons, the Government has got one last chance to get this right. It has already moved to increase the zero-rate threshold and to allow spousal transfers and it must now ensure landowners letting secure tenancies or on a long-term basis have full Agricultural Property Relief on the value of that land.”
A Cumbrian estate has embraced this long-term ethos and has recently let three farms for 25 years, 30 years and 36 years respectively. Why is this? Taking the latter example the farmer and his wife are in their late 50s and farm in partnership with their son who is 31. Their new tenancy will see them through their working lives and will see their son up to retirement age. On another farm, the existing tenant died tragically young and with him, his Farm Business Tenancy. He left a widow in the farmhouse and a 36 year old son who was a partner in the farming business. The new 30-year tenancy has secured the farmhouse for the widow for her life and the farm business for the son, until retirement. These families contribute greatly to the rural community, emphasising the importance of keeping farming families on the land.
Furthermore, it is known that two more farms on the same estate will become available in 2032 and 2037. Will these farms be abandoned to rewilding and Landscape Recovery, becoming a wilderness of brambles and bracken? Certainly not. They will be re-offered on decades long tenancies, securing them for young farming families and their successors to develop their farming enterprises and become an integral part of their rural community.
The Government are offering money for environmental schemes, the only effect of which is to drive farming families from the land and break up the local community. Perhaps it could be asked what the Government is achieving by their largess to land owners. Furthermore, they seem to have no concern over National Food Security. This use of Government money, our taxes, could almost be regarded as immoral.
An old Cumbrian countryman was once heard to comment, “With the privilege of land ownership, comes a responsibility to enhance the temporal and spiritual well being of his tenants and employees.” What a comforting mantra this would be for our farming community to take forward into the uncertain years that lie ahead.
The Government, after recent concessions, expects to raise £300 million by removing APR from farmers. If the tenanted sector only represents one third of the area, then the concession for which the TFA is striving, would cost less than £100 million. In the great scheme of things, can there be such huge benefits achieved for so small a price.
However, I must finish on a negative note because despite the best endeavours of the TFA and their Chief Executive, George Dunn, representations to the Government over many months have hit a brick wall. Pondering on the Government’s intransigence, I have concluded that the Government does not understand the realities of rural life in Cumbria or perhaps, so far from London, they simply do not care.
-Ends-
