A SCOPE OF STATUTORY SUCCESSION SCHEME
8.02 Section 34(1) of the 1986 Act provides that succession rights shall not normally apply to any tenancy created on or after 12 July 1984. Tenancies granted after this date will therefore attract lifetime security of tenure only, and close relatives will have no right to apply to the first tier tribunal (or in Wales the Agricultural Land Tribunal) for succession to the deceased tenant’s tenancy.
8.03 Succession rights continue to apply in full to tenancies granted prior to 12 July 19843 and also in the following cases:4
(a)Where a tenancy was granted (albeit on or after 12 July 1984) by an Agricultural Land Tribunal direction under the succession provisions. This permits the full two-generation succession provided for in the 1986 Act to take place, as a tenancy granted pursuant to a tribunal order will still be subject to succession rights. A succession tenancy granted under this provision will continue to be an agricultural holding, even if granted on or after 1 September 1995.5
(b)Where the tribunal has directed that a new tenancy be granted under the succession provisions, but before it takes effect the landlord and successor make a fresh tenancy agreement. The tribunal direction will normally take effect twelve months after the end of the year of tenancy in which the deceased tenant died,6 but by virtue of s 34(1)(b) any tenancy agreed between the landlord and successor in the intervening period, after the tribunal direction, will attract succession rights. This protects the successor against inadvertently signing away his succession rights. The tenancy will be within the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 even if granted on or after 1 September 1995.7
(c)The parties could provide that succession rights continue to apply to the tenancy of an agricultural holding granted after 12 July 1984, but before the introduction of farm business tenancies by the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 on 1 September 1995. This required that there be a written contract of tenancy that ‘indicates’ (in whatever terms) that Part IV of the 1986 Act is to apply to it.8 One could therefore contract into the succession scheme after 12 July 1984.
This facility was useful in some circumstances, for example where a landlord wished to rearrange holdings on an estate by agreement with existing tenants. Landlord and tenant could effect re-organisation without a loss of succession rights.(d)Part IV of the 1986 Act applies if the tenancy in question is granted in any other way to a tenant who immediately before 12 July 1984 was a tenant of the holding, or of a holding which comprised a substantial part of the holding concerned. This provision protects tenants with succession rights from losing them where an implied surrender and regrant of the tenancy takes place, eg where additional land (perhaps a few fields) is added to the existing tenancy by the landlord. Succession rights will only apply, however, if the deceased held a tenancy of an agricultural holding. The tenancy in question can have been granted expressly, or created impliedly or by operation of law, eg as a result of the operation of the 1986 Act to statutorily convert some types of short term and insecure arrangement into a protected yearly tenancy.9 In some succession cases where letting arrangements have been made informally there may, therefore, be a preliminary question whether the deceased held a protected tenancy, or an insecure interest falling short of a tenancy of the holding, at the time of death.10