COUNTY councils throughout England – including North Yorkshire – are contemplating selling off parts of their farm holdings to raise money to help them through the credit crunch and cuts in Government grants.

The TFA believes that local authorities should be retaining their estates and using carefully crafted asset management plans to ensure that council tax payers are obtaining the best possible value...

Stephen Wyrill - TFA

For generations, shire counties have maintained farms as a way of introducing new tenants to the industry – and plans for a big sell-off is causing grave concern at the Tenant Framers' Association, which represents thousands of farmers who rent their land.

The TFA has held talks with North Yorkshire County Council which they describe as "constructive" and the TFA’s national vice chairman, Stephen Wyrill, is one of the council's tenants.

In a statement issued at the weekend, he commented: "North Yorkshire County Council's policy of progressive disposal of its farm estate is not something which has found favour with the TFA.

"The TFA believes that local authorities should be retaining their estates and using carefully crafted asset management plans to ensure that council tax payers are obtaining the best possible value through strategic, planned disposals of small pockets of relatively high value land for development use whilst retaining the remainder of the estate statutory purposes."

This is similar to recommendations made last year in an important survey of future land use for the Government by Sir Don Curry and, says Mr Wyrill, the county council has agreed to further consider implications of the Curry report because deciding on future sales.

"I am pleased to say that the County Council agreed to consider the conclusions of Sir Don's report and how this might impact upon its ongoing management of its estate," said Mr Wyrill.

This is a very different response to the result of negotiations with Shropshire County Council, which has decided to sell off 10% of its farms.

The TFA’s Chief Executive, George Dunn said "This is bad news all round and sends the wrong signal for all sorts of reasons. People understandably begin to doubt what they are being told from County Hall."