Your challenges
Owning and managing rural land requires legal advice and expertise specific to the agricultural sector. Identifying and dealing with the issues that arise over time in relation to rural land can be hard. Finding a law firm with the depth of experience and knowledge specific to the sector can be even harder.
Your challenges may relate to:
- determining the boundaries and registering your ownership of your property to prevent adverse possession claims by neighbours over unregistered land
- maximising the financial return from covenants, reservations, mineral and manorial rights benefiting your estate
- creating mechanisms to transfer liability for the provision of services or water from an individual to a special purpose vehicle such as a limited company.
The list of challenges is endless and ever-changeable.
How we can support you
Our team acts for a wide range of landowners from farmers, residential owners and landed estates to investors, institutional landowners and incidental owners of rural land. We therefore have the experience to resolve the legal challenges involved with farm and estate ownership.
Our clients range from small-holders, farmers and life-style buyers to landed estates steeped in history, utility companies who own rural land as a by-product of their main business and educational establishments and pension funds endowed with large rural portfolios and run on professional investment criteria. We are therefore sensitive to the varying needs and requirements of our clients.
We are able to provide expert advice specific to this broad range of clients in relation to:
- manorial and lordship rights and common land
- mineral rights and projects
- agricultural ties and restrictions
- shooting, fishing and sporting rights
- easements, wayleaves and public access and rights of way
- succession planning, trust arrangements and schemes and tax efficiencies
- first registrations
- refinancing, bank lending and charges
- farm water, irrigation and reservoirs
The strength you need
Your lawyer will often work as part of a team of professional advisors that may include accountants, bankers and land agents or surveyors. We have close relationships with all the leading national professional firms and a larger number of other advisors. With the professionalism you would expect, our large team of lawyers is able to deliver outstanding client service to you in conjunction with your other advisors.
Lawyers you can trust
Our team is top rated by Chambers UK and Legal 500. Legal 500 states that we are "the kings of landed estates in East Anglia" while Chambers UK notes that we are able to "assemble a bespoke team to suit the needs of [our] institutional, public utility and educational clients, which include Oxford and Cambridge colleges.” Our lead partner, Michael Aubrey, is credited by clients as being "proactive, commercially aware and pragmatic" and the team overall is praised for being a “strong and diverse rural team” by Legal 500.