Farmers facing farm sell-offs

Staffordshire County Council is currently selling off many of its smallholdings but is looking at stepping up the process - and could get rid of all of them to ease its ongoing financial crisis.

Farmers are due to stage a protest before a meeting of the county council cabinet tomorrow, when councillors will discuss the controversial plans.

Today the Express & Star can reveal more details about the four options the council leaders will consider:

• Option one: To continue the current policy of reducing its number of smallholdings from 123 to 87 by 2027, generating £21.53 million.

• Option two: To reduce the number to 60 by 2033 to make £37.7 million.

• Option three: To leave just 20 farms by 2033 and make £112.94 million.

• Option four: To sell all the farms by 2033 to make £119.94 million.

No farmers would be forced off the land until their lease with the council ends. The final lease agreement would run out in 2033, meaning a number of farms would be sold off each year for the next 26 years.

The third option would involve selling off all farmhouses but keeping the land at 20 smallholdings on the edges of villages which have future potential for housing development.

A report to the cabinet says that two sites, one near Bilbrook in South Staffordshire and one in Falmouth Avenue in Stafford, already have the potential for housing development and could be sold for between £30 million and £35 million.

Protesters fear the Labour-controlled council is betraying the farming community in order to sell off land for housing.

They have criticised the sell-off plans, saying the farms are the only sector of the county council's services that make an overall profit for the authority, bringing in more than £400,000 a year.

County farm estates were created in the lean years of the early 20th century and in the inter-war years, when county councils were given the power to buy up farm land and divide it to provide smallholdings.

Graham Clay, chairman of the Tenants' Liaison Group, said: "We look upon this as akin to selling off heirlooms that have been in the family for four generations just to pay the groceries bill.

There is a shortage of young people coming into the industry and, unless farming is in the family, the only way they can get started is through the county council system."

Councillor Neal Podmore, shadow cabinet member for economic prosperity and sustainable communities, said the sell-off would seriously damage Staffordshire's rural economy and bring misery to the tenant farmer community.

He said the 8,716 acres of council-owned farm land offered a "first rung on the ladder" for many young would-be farmers.

Even the county council report into a possible sell-off points out that Government policy is to discourage the further selling off of county council smallholdings.

The report states: "The farm estate provides a valuable source of employment in the rural economy. This is not just on the farms themselves but in the many businesses which support the farming industry."

But deputy county council leader Councillor Rob Simpson defended the review of the council's policy on smallholdings.

He said: "No decision has yet been made. People have likened this to selling the family silver - but we would be turning the silver into gold."

Jeremy Lefroy, Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Stafford and Penkridge, urged the county council to take a long-term view of the situation.