Farmer and his son in bitter £2million hen farm row

A farmer is being sued by his own son in a bitter High Court battle over claims he reneged on a promise to hand over ownership of his £2million free range chicken farm because of a terse text message sent to other family members.

Kevin Renaut, 47, says he began working on the 50-hectare estate when he was just ten years old and was led to believe the lucrative business would become his when his father retired.

But he alleges his father John, 67, has since gone back on his word amid the fall-out with other family members.

Legal documents allege the betrayal happened in 2021 when ‘the defendant told the claimant that the farm would already have been his had he not sent a text… to family members in 2020’.

The subject was raised again in April last year when twice-married John said ‘nothing would be done until he (the claimant) started getting on with the rest of the family and step-family’.

Kevin claims he sacrificed other, more lucrative career opportunities as heir apparent to his father, while his younger brother and sister were not as closely involved with the farm and took up jobs in elsewhere.

He also argues his father has taken a much higher cut of the profits, despite his being a partner in the business.

Lawyers for the father-of-two state in his legal submission to the High Court in London: ‘The claimant has dedicated his life and work to the benefit of the farm. He has worked tirelessly, working long hours and also weekends, for minimal financial reward.

‘From childhood, the claimant acted on the promises/assurances and/or encouragement of the defendant… by envisaging and planning a life for himself at the farm, eventually as its owner in his own right.’

Neither man – who continue to work uneasily together at Hill Farm in Redenhall, Norfolk – would confirm to MailOnline what the alleged dispute with family members was about.

But Kevin said: ‘The promises did appear firm to me. There was no doubt in my mind.

‘Things are very tetchy [with my father]. Clearly, we’re having to work together day by day. We are only in contact during work.’

His father added: ‘Hopefully we’ll resolve this one way or the other.’

The farm – which includes two residential properties and other business ventures including a café and is understood to be worth well in excess of £1 million – was acquired by Kevin’s great-grandfather, Albert, in the late 1950s.

Since then, he states, the business has been handed down from father to son, while other siblings have moved on to other work.

Kevin claims he was still at primary school when he began driving a tractor at the farm, which had a dairy herd at the time.

‘The claimant worked on the farm after school, at weekends, and during holidays,’ according to documents.

‘His daily task after school each day was ‘scraping out and finishing up’, that is scraping out and cleaning the yard and the pens after the cows.

‘At weekends and in the holidays he would assist with whatever work was required, feeding the cattle, ‘scraping out and finishing up’, looking after the calves, handling hay bales, mowing and helping at harvest.

‘There was no such encouragement of the claimant’s siblings, Paul and Lucy.’

After leaving school, he completed a two-year course in agricultural mechanics at Otley College of Agriculture and Horticulture, now known as Suffolk Rural College, then worked full time at the farm from 1995, becoming a partner two years later.

Kevin claims he was paid £1,000 a month plus diesel for his car and water rates, because he was told profits had to be ploughed back into the business.

He allegedly also received just ten per cent of the profits in some years, rather than the 50 per cent he was entitled to.

John sold a field in 2002 to pay for a divorce settlement with his then wife, Rosie, and land to the east of the site went for £587,895 in 2021, it is claimed.

He also invested significant sums in the business, including around £150,000 into the construction of chicken sheds in 1997 when the dairy herd was sold off, a similar sum for a further expansion of the sheds in 2000, the installation of two wind turbines for £132,000 in 2011 and tarmacking the driveway in 2013 for around £35,000.

Kevin – who lives in a cottage on the farm with his partner Nathalie Lewis, while his father lives in the main farmhouse with wife Lesley – further alleges the partnership shares the costs of a caravan meadow, which has electrics, water and requires maintenance, and three storage lock-ups, yet his father ‘alone receives the income’.

And pension contributions ‘on behalf of the defendant [were] substantially greater than those on behalf of the claimant, by a factor of about five’.

Lawyers for Kevin – who supplements his income by running a café on the farm at a spot he rents from his father without ‘reducing his working hours for the partnership’ – said: ‘The claimant put up with the defendant exercising such control because he trusted the defendant and because eventually he himself would become the owner of the farm.’

At one meeting with solicitors, the legal documents say, John – who is said to work two or three hours a day for three or four days a week now – ‘reiterated to the claimant that ‘it will all be yours anyway’.

The documents lodged with the High Court add: ‘The defendant has failed to take steps, as promised, to give effect to those promises/assurances and, more recently, has failed to respond to the claimant’s letter before claim dated December 20, 2023.

‘It is accepted that tensions have arisen within the family (and step-family) in recent years but such tensions have substantially been caused by the defendant’s failure to stand by his promises and assurances to the claimant and the resulting uncertainty as to the future of the farm.’

A source close to the family said: ‘As I understand it, the sticking point is Kevin making amends with the rest of the family and resolving any problems between them.

‘But you know how that can be – sometimes it’s easier said than done.’

The case is the latest legal battle between a father and child over alleged promises made about inheriting a farm.

Recent examples include a High Court ruling in October when Michael Spencer was awarded his late father’s Lincolnshire business despite being left out of his will after successfully claiming it had been promised to him. He had worked the land since 15.

The type of claim is known as a ‘proprietary estoppel’, in which the claimant must show a promise was made to them, that they relied on the promise, and that it had been to their detriment to do so.

Kevin Renaut said a system should be in place to protect the rights of children who dedicate their lives to helping with the running of a family business with only a verbal assurance of their future claim, saying: ‘I do think it’s important that things should be more documented.’