Somerset’s disregard for farms bucks the trend - TFA

Tenant Farmers Association chief executive George Dunn said Somerset was a relatively isolated case as far its approach to county farms is concerned.

Mr Dunn said councils representing Hampshire, Herefordshire, Norfolk, Devon and Staffordshire had all recently considered disposing of their farms. But each had ultimately reached the opposite conclusion to Somerset.

“They all decided there was better value to be had holding onto these farms and taking the development uplift as and when it arose,” he said.

Only North Yorkshire is currently taking the same approach as Somerset, he said. 

He highlighted the situation in Somerset’s neighbouring county of Gloucestershire which has raised £100 million over the past 30 years through carefully planned, strategic disposals of land for development uplift, while largely maintaining the size of its farm estate intact.

“It has retained the silver not lost it. I fail to understand why this is not possible in the case of Somerset,” said Mr Dunn.

He said most councils were also aware of the wider benefits their farms bring. 

“They are not only the principal entry mechanism for agriculture, they provide council taxpayers with benefits in terms of environment, planning, green spaces, flood management, greenbelt policy and education outside the classroom, as well as, if they are managed properly, a profitable enterprise contributing to other council taxpayers’ services,” he said.

Mr Dunn urged Somerset to think again and undertake a longer review, as other local authorities had done.

Somerset council cabinet members unanimously passed a resolution to review the future of its 60 farms on case by case basis over the next two months, at a packed meeting in Taunton on Monday.

The council said sales of its farms, worth an estimated £40 million, would be used to counter anticipated cuts in Government funding and to reduce its £400 million debt.

It stressed the recommendation was that farms ‘may’ rather than ‘would’ be sold. However, farming organisations like the TFA and NFU said all the indications were that the farms would be disposed of once their tenancy agreements expired.

David Huxtable, council cabinet member for resources, said: “We are committed to cutting debt and we’ll have to work with far less money from government. These are tough times and we are facing up to tough decisions.”

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name