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Agricultural Land Transactions

Glanvilles Commercial Property team has specialist experience in all types of agricultural land transactions ranging from the sale and purchase of large farms through to small paddocks. We have close connections with local agricultural land agents throughout Hampshire and Sussex to help provide all the professional help and advice you need.

We pride ourselves in assisting many farming families over several generations and look forward to helping many more existing and new farming families and partnerships over the generations to come.

Our experience and expertise are not limited to sales and purchases. We can help with all elements of running and selling a farming business. Set out below are several types of transactions we can assist with and brief explanations of what these include:

Rights of way, easements and wayleave agreements

Easements are rights over land and the most common type of easement is a right of way over land. This can be a right of way over the whole of the land or over a strip of land. Our team is able to advise on all aspect of easements including their creation or removal, the validity of an easement being claimed, the extent of an easement already granted or the implication of prescriptive easements.

Wayleave agreements are typically entered into by land owners and energy companies to permit the installation of services below the land. These agreements grant access to the service provider to install and subsequently maintain or manage the service. Service providers will usually try to negotiate terms with landowners to agree a wayleave agreement however if no agreement can be reaches statutory wayleave agreements can be made to permit the services to run through the land. We can advise on all aspects of wayleave agreements whether that is advice relating to the grant and creation or advice relating to the terms of an existing agreement.

Water supplies, private borehole agreements and drainage concerns

Our team has experience in negotiating terms for new water supplies and borehole agreements. Boreholes are deep cavities in the ground which can be used to extract water or other minerals. Typically, the creation of a borehole requires a license from the Environmental Agency and once created will be required to be registered. In addition to advising on all aspects of borehole agreements, we also have extensive history in negotiating terms for the laying of new water pipes and drainage facilities.

Registration of farms and land with the Land Registry

Unregistered land is land which is not registered with HM Land Registry. In these circumstances, the owners of the land would need to prove their ownership by producing historical title deeds if they wanted to deal with the property in any way. The deeds might be with the owner, the mortgage lender, the owner’s solicitor or sometimes be lost. Due to this, it can be beneficial to register land with the Land Registry so that there can be no question as to ownership or boundaries. We have a team experienced in carrying out detailed investigations of title and registering these with the Land Registry.

Farm Business Tenancies

A farm business tenancy is a tenancy created under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 (“the Act”). These are created where all or part of the land is farmed for a business or trade that is wholly or primarily agricultural. This can include farm shops, food processing and the provisions of recreational facilities. All rent reviews are conducted in accordance with the Act.

These tenancies can be entered into by any land owner and tenant and the terms of the tenancy should be negotiated and agreed between the parties and then recorded in writing by a Lease. We are able to assist in the negotiations relating to these tenancies and advise on the terms of the same. We are also experienced in drafted the required Lease and registering the same with the Land Registry.

Overage and clawback provisions

Overage is an agreement whereby a land owner agrees to sell their land for a sum of money on the basis that, if the land is redeveloped in the future, additional money must be paid to the seller. This is particularly useful whereby large plots of land are sold to developers and in these situations additional money may be paid where planning permission is granted or where properties are built.

Whilst these agreements are very useful, they are highly specialist and difficult to draft given that they must be drafted in such a way that purchasers cannot avoid paying the seller in the future. There are a variety of cases whereby developers have sought to frustrate these agreements and avoid payments by simply not building the last house on an estate or by not selling the properties once built. These factors must all be considered in any drafting and we are well experience in drafting these agreements.

This is in no way an exhaustive list of the services we offer, for further information on how we may assist you, please contact our Commercial Property team.

Get in touch with our commercial property solicitors

Looking for help with an agricultural propertyl property? Or need advise and support with any other aspect of commercial property law? Contact our highly experienced commercial property solicitors in ChichesterFareham or Havant or use the contact form below and we will get back to you quickly.