Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 – Tenancy of agricultural holding – Statutory rights of succession – Holding farmed by claimant’s family for generations – Father taking over holding by tenancy granted in 1972 – Claimant taking over from father in 1998 under new tenancy agreement – Whether this exhausting maximum two statutory successions permitted by 1986 Act – Whether section 37(1) and (2) of 1986 Act applying to consensual tenancy granted prior to coming into force of original statutory succession scheme in 1976 – Claim allowed
The claimant held a tenancy of an agricultural holding to which Part IV of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 applied. The holding formed part of an estate of which the defendants were the trustees. The claimant’s family had farmed the land for generations. In 1972, the claimant’s father took over the holding and became the tenant under a new tenancy agreement made in October of that year, which replaced the previous tenancy, which dated from 1947. In 1998, the claimant had become the tenant by a further tenancy agreement between the trustees as landlords, the claimant as tenant and his father as outgoing tenant. The claimant in turn wished his son to take over the farm after him.
The defendants contended that the statutory succession provisions of the 1986 Act no longer applied to the tenancy since there had already been the maximum two successions permitted by the Act. They argued that both the 1972 and 1998 tenancies counted as successions falling within section 37(1) of the Act since both qualified as occasions where the consensual grant of a new tenancy to an eligible person, prior to the death of the sole tenant, was to be deemed, under section 37(2), to have been obtained by virtue of a direction of the Agricultural Land Tribunal.
The claimant sought a declaration that the statutory succession provisions continued to apply. He accepted that section 37(1) and (2) applied to the agreement under which he had become tenant, but argued that they could not apply to his father’s tenancy since it pre-dated the coming into force of the original statutory succession scheme under the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 and the creation of the Agricultural Land Tribunal.
Held: The claim was allowed.
A tenancy granted by agreement prior to the coming into force of the 1976 Act did not have the effect of taking the case out of the statutory succession scheme introduced in 1976. Section 37(1) and (2) should be read together. A tenancy should not be deemed, under section 37(2), to have been obtained by a tribunal that did not exist at the relevant date; that would be to deem something to have happened that could not possibly have occurred. For an event to be deemed to be the equivalent of an Agricultural Land Tribunal direction, it should have taken place at a time when it was possible to obtain such a direction: obiter dicta of Jowitt J in Trustees of Saunders v Ralph [1993] 28 EG 129 not followed. That construction of section 37 advanced the legislative purpose of limiting the number of statutory successions to two. Pre-1976 tenancies had nothing to do with the statutory scheme and there was no reason to assume that parliament intended pre-1976 consensual acts to restrict the statutory rights of an eligible person. The succession provisions were governed by the opening words of section 18(1): “Where after the passing of this Act…”; that accorded with the resumption against retrospective legislation: Yew Bon Tew v Kenderaan Bas Maria [1983] 1 AC 553 applied. Had parliament intended section 37(2) to apply to transactions that occurred before 1976, and to confer on them retrospectively a significance that they did not have at the time, clearer words would have been used.
Martin Rodger QC (instructed by Birketts LLP, of Ipswich) appeared for the claimant; the defendants did not appear.
Sally Dobson, barrister
