Overview
I head up the Agriculture team at Michelmores and I advise on a broad range of contentious agricultural matters, helping clients to navigate their way through difficult issues in a constantly evolving sector.
My expertise includes agricultural property disputes, contractual disputes, co-ownership and trust disputes. I have particular expertise in landlord and tenant, succession and farming partnership disputes and my practice also covers estoppel claims, rights of way, possession claims, natural capital issues, issues relating to the potential development of land, agricultural banking and insolvency.
I am often brought in to provide strategic advice at the outset, but in more heavily contested matters I attend mediations and take cases through arbitration, Tribunal or court proceedings.
The experience that I have gained in advising on contentious matters leads me to have a unique insight into advising on the pitfalls to avoid when dealing with partnership formation and dissolution, the grant or surrender of tenancies and complex restructurings including the division of land as family businesses evolve.
My client base is broad and spread across England and Wales. I act for farming businesses, entrepreneurs, land owners, estates, lending institutions, receivers and local authorities.
I regularly lecture to the RICS and CAAV and to groups of accountants. I contributed to the LexisNexis Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, Agricultural Tenancies Volume and also to the 10th Edition of Scammell, Densham and Williams’s Law of Agricultural Holdings.
Recent experience
Advising a family member on the implementation of a corporate demerger of a multi million pound farming company to allow them to trade separately from their family. This involved delivering strategic tenancy advice and working alongside my corporate colleagues to deliver the demerger, as well as providing advice on the impact of various integrated family trusts
Acting in Tribunal proceedings brought about by an application for succession to a tenancy protected by the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 and connected High Court proceedings to determine the validity of a notice to quit
Leading on providing strategic advice on the prospects of obtaining vacant possession where agricultural land is earmarked for development
Acting for the successful defendants in Williams v Williams [2022], a case involving a family farm in South Wales where issues arose following the parents death in relation to proprietary estoppel, partnership law and the interpretation of a will
