The Scottish Government has been warned it is in real danger of forcing landlords away from letting farms.
A group of eight landowners – including Dunecht Estates, Moray Estates and the MacRobert Trust – have sent an open letter to farm minister Richard Lochhead expressing their concern about proposals in the upcoming land reform bill.
The letter says: “Regardless of the scale of our operations or our type of ownership, what unites us is fear of what may become of the tenant farming sector in Scotland should certain proposed amendments to the bill in relation to agricultural holdings go ahead.”
They warn against a proposal to allow secure 1991 act tenants to assign their tenancy for value, describing it as a “discriminatory measure” against landowners.
The original recommendation from the government’s agricultural holdings legislation review group was for secure tenants to be able to convert their tenancies into a long-term tenancy, which could then be assigned for value. The latest proposal expands on this and would allow tenants to sell secure tenancies on.
“Even with a right for the landlord to buy the tenant out, albeit at a higher price than a tenant would pay, the reality is that many will not be able to afford to buy back farmland and buildings which, of course, they already own,” said the landowners.
“Surely this cannot be a balanced approach and how many landlords will re-let once they have bought out the tenant? Landlords see this as nothing more than a discriminatory measure driven mainly be a desire from some quarters for the bill to be made more radical.”
They warned the proposals were likely to face challenge as they were a fundamental breach of property rights, however they stressed their letter was not a threat to government but instead a plea for the land reform bill to strike the right balance of property rights.
“The Scottish Government is in real danger of forcing landlords away from letting,” said the landowners.
“Those of us whose businesses have the letting of farms at their core are acutely aware that agricultural landlords will not be in any way attracted to let land on a long-term in the face of such an unwarranted measure. The impact of such a measure will not be good for tenant farming and therefore Scottish agriculture.”
The other signatories of the letter were Atholl Estates, Buccleuch Estates, Dormont Estate, Dunfallandy Estate and Kirkdale Estate.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman responded and said: “The agricultural holdings provisions in the land reform bill have been designed as a package of measures to improve security and investment conditions for existing tenants, to deliver the environment to create tenancies for new entrants, and to ensure an appropriate balance between tenants’ and landlords’ rights.”