RURAL FOCUS

BY CLA SOUTH WEST COLUMNIST PAUL MILLARD

Handing over the family farm is notoriously difficult and fraught with emotional and practical difficulties – yet our traditional farming families underpin the concept of stewardship, the values and long-term investment and governance that encompass strong and enduring links with local communities and people.

Agriculture has an ageing workforce, and handing over the farm to the next generation or to a young person entering into the industry can be difficult. Powerful emotions and a reluctance to address hard practical issues can influence or preclude sound business decision making – sometimes to the detriment of the farming business itself.

Whenever we get into discussions about bringing new blood into farming or opening the door for the next generation, one of the inescapable facts is that they stay there because

they have nowhere else to go and perhaps because restrictions on building in the countryside create an additional barrier for farming families wanting to make space for the next generation.

Extraordinarily, England is the only country in the UK where the planning system fails to recognise that a home on the farm for the outgoing farmer can really ease this process – while also allowing the retiring farmer to continue to provide advice and support and to retain a sense of belonging to the home and the farm where he has lived and worked all his life.

Recognising the housing needs of farming families could also remove one of the crucial barriers that too often prevents the next generation from taking over the business.

Thanks then, to the CLA for publishing a thoughtful report titled “Strong Foundations” which provides both an insight into the problem and a rational for change.

The CLA expects that the changes Brexit will bring to provide a catalyst for many farmers to retire. A review of the National Planning Policy Framework is currently under way and it offers a “seize the day” opportunity to change policy to one which actively encourages this type and purpose of rural development.

The CLA says it is time England’s planning policy on homes for retiring farmers caught up with the rest of the UK.

But let’s be clear, this is not an argument in favour of offering every farmer an automatic right to build a new house on their land when they retire.

The intention is to amend national policy so that at least one of the barriers that currently deter older farmers from passing the farm onto the next generation, is removed - and it is, surely, simple enough to provide sufficient safeguards and caveats within the process to ensure that the policy can only be used to achieve that which it is designed to.