Family could be forced to sell farm of 100 years because of Labour

A devastated farmer whose land has been passed down through generations has told of how his family could face an inheritance tax bill of almost £2million. 

Martin Twyman, 84, said he was ‘deeply worried’ about the future after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s new budget earlier this week.

Mr Twyman, who owns HW Twyman Farm near Canterbury, Kent, inherited the business from his father Harry who started with a small market garden in the 1930s.

The family have been working on the land and expanding the business since the late 1950s – including with daughter Tracy – to grow wheat, barley, apples and potatoes.

Mr Twyman said: ‘I would love my family to continue the business that my father started – and for the next generation and their children.

‘But the reality is my family could be left with a huge tax bill which would mean having to sell off lots of land – and then it would make it unviable.’

‘What we are talking about is growing our own food in the UK, which is surely a basic need, but now faces this new threat.’

Previously, farmland and associated buildings had benefitted from ‘agricultural property relief’.

However, anyone inheriting working farmland and its buildings will have to pay 20 per cent tax on valuations over £1million from April 2026 following the Budget.

With farmland alone worth about £10,000 an acre, any estate of over just 100 acres looks set to be liable – although Reeves says only 27 per cent of farms across the country will be affected.

There are concerns smaller farms could be dragged in when buildings like farmhouses and barns are taken into account.

The figures look stark for Mr Twyman’s family as the tax liability on his 900-acre farm could be as high as £2million, he claims.

Mr Twyman added: ‘That’s a crazy amount of money for our descendants to find and will mean having to sell vast amounts of land which will then make the farm unviable.

‘Farmers have had it tough enough with the increasing regulation and red tape and now this bombshell.’

Kim Gower, who owns Blandred Farm in Folkestone, Kent, is equally aghast and fears the new inheritance tax could force the family to sell off a fifth of their land.

She said: ‘Agricultural land has been traditionally exempt from inheritance tax to avoid the necessity of selling it on the death of the owner to cover that bill.

‘It often takes several generations to build up a farm because land and buildings are so expensive.

‘On our family farm, it has taken 100 years to grow it from a small dairy farm to the larger arable farm we have today.

‘Even the smallest farms will be unlikely to fall under the £1 million threshold set by the Chancellor.

‘It has taken us the last 30 years to increase the farmland by a fifth. We also still have a mortgage on this land.

‘For us, it effectively means that we will have to sell a fifth of our land to pay the inheritance tax, wiping out three decades of work and investment.’

Writing on X, Jeremy Clarkson, whose hit Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm has given a publicised insight into the challenges of farming, said farmers have been ‘shafted’.

However, the measures have also been defended by Paul Johnson, director of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies.

He said: ‘This affects a very small number of farms each year. [Farmers] are still going to be treated better than anyone else in terms of inheritance tax.’

Farmers could still transfer land to younger generations and not pay inheritance tax if this is done seven years before they die.