3 The Agricultural Holdings Act 1984

1.16 The Northfield Committee recommended that the required amendments to the existing legislation should be agreed between government and the organisations involved in the agriculture industry – notably the Country Landowners Association and the National Farmers Union.¹³ The 1984 Act was subsequently based on a package of measures agreed by the CLA and NFU, although a number of technical legal amendments were also incorporated.

1.17 The central feature of the CLA/NFU package was the removal of succession rights for all tenancies granted after the passage of the Act. As a quid pro quo for the abolition of succession, a new rent formula was introduced to break the link between rent valuations and the free market rental demanded on first letting.¹⁴ The Act made a number of alterations, along the lines suggested by the Northfield Report, to the succession scheme itself. The amount of land to which a successor can succeed has, for instance, now been limited to one ‘commercial unit’. Schedule 2 to the 1984 Act also provided for voluntary retirement for tenants at 65, and lifetime succession by their ‘nominated’ successors. This implemented one of the Northfield Committee’s major recommendations, although the scheme only applies to tenancies to which succession rights on death still accrue.¹⁵ The Act also made detailed amendments to the provisions governing notices to quit and other aspects of the security of tenure provisions. It did, however, omit some of the measures recommended by the Northfield Committee, and the opportunity was not taken to institute a thoroughgoing review of all aspects of the operation of the legislation. As a result, some major anomalies remain, eg the fact that subtenants, and tenants holding under tenancies of between one and two years, have no security of tenure at all under the Acts.