Rural

RDP started as a boutique commercial firm offering advice to rural clients and the firm has remained close to its roots. The real estate team specialise, along with development and investment work, in all aspects of rural real estate law.

Work areas include:

  • Easements, rights and profit a prendres.
  • Acquisition and disposal of fisheries, forests, shoots and mining / mineral interests.
  • Renewable energy projects, including solar, wind, hydro, biomass and tidal.
  • The firm also advises landed estates and large landowners on all elements of estate management. This often crosses over into the work carried out by the development and investment team but also includes advice on tenancies, sales of land, diversification of portfolios and alternative income streams.

Experience includes:

  • Acting on complex energy renewal schemes, often across multiple land holdings.
  • Advising on the structuring and sale of estate assets, such as farms and cottages.
  • Advice on the sale of and purchase of quarries, the protection of mineral, rights and enforcement of mineral rights.
  • Sale and purchase of fisheries and forestry.

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James Davies

Director

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Case Studies

Case Study (A) - Rural

The firm was instructed to act on behalf of three clients acquiring an Estate from The Crown. The acquisition was a challenging one which saw a main residence, estate cottages, forestry, fishing rights and a working farm purchased. Key features of the deal included: -

  1. The main residence lying within the curtilage of a Grade 1 Listed UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  2. The water to the estate cottages being supplied from an undocumented source. This supply was made in common with non-estate cottages and a key term of the transaction was that the purchaser had to maintain the supply, despite having no legal right to it.
  3. The fishing rights were unregistered. Title to them had to be constituted and claimed. Additional fishing rights were claimed via the doctrine of prescription.
  4. Some of the access points to the estate were across third-party land but did not benefit from legal rights of way. These had to be claimed, also, via the doctrine of prescription.
  5. Part of the estate was subject to a farm business tenancy. The reversion to this was split by the acquisition and so this had to be regulated.
  6. Part of the estate had been VAT elected and part was VAT exempt. Care was therefore taken when structuring the acquisition to make it as tax efficient as possible both in respect of VAT and Land Transaction Tax.

The firm enjoys acting on the acquisition of complex landholdings, particularly rural / agricultural land where commercial pragmatism has to work in and with, at times, quite esoteric legal principles.

Case Study (A) - Rural

Case Study (B) – Rural

The firm was instructed to act on behalf of five landowning families who were proposing to enter into an option to grant leases to a solar farm developer, the option being exercised following the obtaining of planning consent for the development of a solar farm. The landholding comprised circa 200 acres and was split between the five families in different sized landholdings.

An initial concern was the basis by which rent under the lease would be paid. The primary question was whether the landowners needed to agree to “equalise” the payments between themselves, depending on whether their land was / was not included in the eventual development scheme and, if so, on what basis? Ultimately a solution was found which provided that: -

(a) Where some of a landowner’s land was required for the scheme all the landowner’s land would be leased. This thereby placed risk upon the developer rather than the landowner, in terms of what land may, or may not, be included; and

(b) Rent would be paid at the greater of a fixed price per acre or a set percentage of the profit realised by the scheme. This enabled the rent to “track” increased output from the scheme over time.

The leases had to be drafted to interlink the five separate landholdings but, in the case of three of the landholdings, to also regulate interaction between the let areas and land being retained by relevant landowners. At lease two of these retained areas have longer term development potential and this had to be safeguarded, in terms both of enabling any future development and ensuring that the lease terms did not prevent that development.

One of the landholdings featured a defective title and so conditionality was introduced into the option around the rectification of this. Further landholdings suffered from lack of legal rights of access and these had to be safeguarded by the documentation of existing prescriptive rights.

Working with multiple clients on complex schemes is deeply satisfying. In this instance clear lines of communication between advising agents / the firm and the firm / its clients and clearly defined milestones in the transactional process helped to deliver an end result that it is hoped will benefit all parties in the immediate future.

Case Study (B) - Rural

Case Study (C) - Rural

The firm acted on the acquisition of a caravan park for a client which operates numerous parks within England and Wales.

Caravan park acquisitions are always very interesting because, although primarily real estate transactions, they have corporate elements and, often, quite complex planning histories. In this transaction these elements included the assignment of the business goodwill, the transfer of staff, the assignment of the business social media / marketing asset and the novation of certain key contracts which were essential to the running of the business.

A detailed review of a complex planning history was undertaken to ensure that each of the current pitches was properly consented and being used for its authorised use.

The title was defective in various regards. Overlapping freeholds needed to be rectified and a prescriptive right of way established for the main site access, which had been conveyed historically without adequate rights being granted for the benefit of the land in question. An area of land forming part of the physical park (which was not registered within the park’s title) also had to be claimed. The firm also reviewed surrounding planning proposals to see whether these might impact, adversely, on the amenity of the target.

The firm particularly enjoys working on projects that either see farm diversification or else the creation of rural enterprise projects. Such schemes will lie very much at the future of taking forward investment in the UK’s rural areas and we recognise that such schemes require both high quality commercial legal advice and an understanding of rural / agricultural practicalities.

Case Study (C) - Rural