Government proposals for changes in the law on compensation for land acquired by compulsory purchase are welcome “as far as they go”, says the NFU, which is very much the overall attitude taken by Donald Troup (see our issue of April 29 (p22). But there is still much to be done to improve the underlying basis of open market value, and to win acknowledgement that farmers are only willing sellers for developments by privatised companies if the price is right.
Commenting on the DOE’s recent consultative paper, Land Compensation and Compulsory Purchase Legislation, the NFU says that this incorporates many of the improvements for which it has been campaigning, in particular:
- improvements in the payment of interest on compensation;
- extension of interest to other forms of compensation, such as land drainage improvement schemes or compensation on planning decisions;
- extension of severance compensation for tenants to all other land farmed with the land acquired — bringing tenants into line with owner-occupiers; and
- extension of farm loss payments to tenants, and when only part of the land is acquired.
But the NFU is also recommending that the DOE should in addition adopt the following proposals recommended by the RICS in its recent report, Compensation for Compulsory Acquisition:
- payment of an additional allowance on the total compensation, in recognition that a claimant is an unwilling seller;
- provision of a supplementary allowance when part of the property is taken, in order to assist reorganisation of the business; and
- authorisation for the laying of sewers and water pipelines etc to be subject to the consent of every owner, lessee or occupier.
All this agreement is admirable, particularly when several highly sensitive acquisition schemes are about to come into operation, but the Government gives no sign of urgency.
As Donald Troup comments: “This attitude must be changed — and changed quickly — if only because of the implications flowing from the abolition of rates: this legislation must be in place before April 1990.”
