County council farms estate shrinks by another 1,000ha
We’ve featured our concerns about councils selling off the land they acquired to support new entrants and people of limited means into farming in bygone times. This article reveals no slowing in that disappointing trend. It tells us:
The total area of county council farms in England shrank by more than 1,000ha between April 2015 and March 2016, according to latest figures.
The government has published its Annual Report to Parliament on Local Authority Smallholdings in England which this year collates data from 42 local authorities.
It found the number of county council farm tenancies in England fell by 61 in 2015-16, with 115 new tenancies granted, but another 174 terminated.
Figures on the amount of land acquired and disposed of by each smallholdings authority in 2015-16 showed 86ha were acquired by three smallholdings authorities and a total of 1,048ha were sold or otherwise disposed of.
The land sold off was spread across 25 different smallholdings authorities with the highest amount sold in Bedfordshire (130ha).
The local authorities with the most farmland are now Cambridgeshire (13,190ha), Lincolnshire (7,720ha) and Norfolk (6,450ha).