How the Rock Report impacts Tenant Farmers
How the Rock Report impacts Tenant Farmers
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has published an independent report by the Tenancy Working Group (TWG) entitled ‘Rock Review: working together for a thriving agricultural tenanted sector’. The government is to respond in due course but the main concerns the report highlighted are as follows:
- Improving the tenant-landlord relationship.
In particular Defra should consult on legislative changes to open up the ability for tenants to diversify their businesses without the landlord unreasonably refusing consent. In defining the tests for unreasonableness, consideration will need to be given for how the diversification impacts the landlord’s tax status, land value and estate management plans. They should also consider legislation to extend existing AHA protections such as ‘no unreasonable refusal of scheme entry’ and ‘access to arbitration’ to FBT tenants.
To support this, Defra ministers should actively engage the services of the Law Commission to update legislation pertaining to agriculture, tenancies, and land use in England to bring it into the 21st century and make it fit for the multiple demands being made on land.
Defra should appointment a Tenant Farmer Commissioner to ensure government policy is tenant proof and to ensure fairness within the tenanted sector. They should also have the remit to examine and strengthen dispute resolution processes.
- Ensuring the growth and viability of businesses in the tenanted sector
Defra needs to examine ways to incentivise investment into renewing and upgrading infrastructure. The government should address the state of tenancy agreements head on with a broad consultation on tenancy reform in 2023. Part of the consultation should address why FBT agreements are using such a narrow band of the flexibility available within the ATA 1995, and ways to update the definition of agriculture and the rules of good husbandry to encompass actions for environmental benefits.
- Preventing tenant farmers from going bankrupt
The Government needs to set out clear guidelines to ensure that tenants are rewarded and not disadvantaged for their work in maintaining and improving the natural capital asset and managing the associated flow of ecosystem services.
- Minimising the loss of land from the tenanted sector.
Developers of government schemes such as the England Woodland Creation Offer, natural capital markets, and the forthcoming land use framework need to consider how they work together to mitigate land being removed from tenancies, and provide adequate protection to tenants who could manage woodland.
- Reducing scheme complexity and ensuring flexibility and access for tenants
Defra must design all Environmental Land Management schemes and Productivity schemes to be accessible and open to tenant farmers. This should be done by starting from the basic principle that tenants should not need landlord consent to enter tenanted land into schemes and landlords should not be allowed to enter tenanted land into schemes unilaterally. Landlords can only enter tenanted land into scheme options that require permanent land use change, jointly with the tenant and then only with consent of the tenant. The consent of the tenant should be entered into separately and subsequently to a signed tenancy agreement.
The Report also advises that Defra must publish an update on their progress against these recommendations every year of the agricultural transition plan and there should be a specific section on how the recommendations of this review are being implemented. This is a long overdue review of the difficulties faced by the tenanted sector in farming and should ensure the needs of tenant farmers are placed at the forefront of government policy moving forwards.
(This article is not intended to be comprehensive or to provide specific legal advice. It should not be relied upon in the absence of advice given in relation to particular circumstances.)
For further information contact nlinehan@bowcockcuerden.co.uk
