Quarter of England’s farmland owned by simply 2,500 toffs and fatcats, new figures present

A quarter of all England’s farmland belongs to just 2,500 owners, it can be revealed.

The revelation comes ahead of a Tory-triggered Commons vote on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ 20% inheritance tax on farms. Under the new rule, the first £1million is tax-free and with other tax reliefs available, a couple could leave £3m of land tax-free.

But Kemi Badenoch’s party is using Wednesday’s Opposition Day debate to oppose it. The Country Land and Business Association claims 70,000 farms could be affected annually but the government puts it at just 500. And Defra figures obtained by campaigner Guy Shrubsole highlight how large landowners would benefit most from any reversal.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says those paying more tax now would be heavily concentrated among large wealthy landowners. There are more than 100,000 farm holdings in England, covering 22 million acres in total. But the Defra data show just 2,568 very large farms own or manage 5.6 million acres – or 26% of all the farmland in England.

Previous research by Mr Shrubsole for his book Who Owns England? found, for example, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry controls more than 270,000 acres across Scotland and England. The 10th Duke, Richard Scott, has a fortune put at £260million.

The 12th Duke of Northumberland, Ralph Percy, owns 132,000 acres in the North East of England. He was No285 in the Sunday Times Rich List 2024, with an estimated wealth of £509m. The seventh Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, owns 129,300 acres and is worth £10.1billion.

One farm owner opposing the Chancellor’s inheritance tax plans is billionaire Sir James Dyson. The vacuum entrepreneur, 77, owns 35,000 acres in Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset through Dyson Farming.

He wrote in The Times: “Rachel Reeves is killing off established family businesses, and any incentive to start new ones, with her 20% Family Death Tax.” TV host Jeremy Clarkson, who owns a 1,000-acre farm in Oxfordshire, told a newspaper in 2021 that avoiding inheritance tax was critical to his land-purchase decision.

But this week he said he bought it “to shoot”. Tax lawyer Dan Neidle believes a third of valuable farmland is bought for tax avoidance.

He said: “There is so much more tax avoidance here than I or anyone else appreciated.” Prof Richard Murphy of Sheffield University agrees that land is often “used as a financial instrument”.

A Dyson spokesman said: “The Dyson family – among the top 10 UK taxpayers – has invested £140million in upgrading its farms, in addition to the cost of the land, which far exceeds any possible inheritance tax benefit.”

The statistic that a quarter of the farmland in England belongs to just 2,500 farms is staggering. I’ve known for a long time that land ownership in England is very unequal. In my book Who Owns England? I concluded that 1% of the population owns half of England.

I was wrong. These latest figures suggest it’s far, far less than that. Most of us want to believe that the countryside belongs to small-scale farmers – like my grandparents, who farmed in Cornwall.

But most of this country is owned by people like the Duke of Westminster, who has 129,000 acres and a £10billion fortune. In fact, 20 dukes own a million acres of Britain. Many families have owned estates here since 1066, when William the Conqueror handed out looted land to his barons. In recent years these aristocrats have been joined by rich City bankers, investors and celebrities who have bought farmland as a tax dodge.

Since 1992, farmland owners have been able to claim Agricultural Property Relief, meaning they don’t pay any inheritance tax on the land when they die. Now the government has announced it will cap this tax break at £1million.

With other tax reliefs, this means a couple owning farmland can leave around £3milion of inheritance, tax-free. It’s completely understandable that farmers would be worried but just 4% of the population ever pay inheritance tax, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

And when you look at the landowners protesting the loudest, such as TV star Jeremy Clarkson, you see that they’re not at all representative of most farmers. Small farmers deserve all of our support but it’s only right that the wealthiest landowners pay their fair share of tax.

Guy Shrubsole, author of Who Owns England? and The Lie of the Land