A recent estate visit offered a useful reminder that mixed farming systems only really work when the human side is thought through as carefully as the agronomy. The estate in question runs a deliberately circular system. Half the land sits in long-term herbal grass leys, focused on building soil health. The other half moves through […]

I spent part of last week with the CLA, both at a rural professionals’ conference and around the table with a local steering group. The conversations were varied, but the underlying concern was consistent. Landowners are not short of ideas.What they are short of is confidence that those ideas will still make sense once grid […]

Written by Dawn Woollam (Dudley Peverill Associates), Kate Russell (Tellus Natural Capital) and Jess Bradley (Nicholsons).   Let us start with something that should be obvious but somehow still gets overlooked: the British countryside is one of the most commercially valuable assets we have. Not just for food production, not just for carbon sequestration or […]

We have achieved another year of growth at DPA, despite the ongoing uncertainty around inheritance tax and the challenging trading environment. That may sound counter-intuitive. But in practice, the uncertainty itself has been a catalyst. We are seeing more open, more honest multi-generational conversations than we have in years, particularly where the next generation is […]

John Deere has been publishing The Furrow since 1895. That is not a typo. For well over a century, one of the world’s biggest machinery brands has understood a simple truth: the people who win long-term are the ones who show up consistently with useful, interesting stories. That opportunity is sitting on thousands of UK […]

Across a range of recent government consultations, from rural tourism and visitor accommodation to the future of rental standards, the same pattern is emerging. The pressure point in rural businesses isn’t always access to land, capital, or demand, but management bandwidth. The Many Happy Returns podcast offered a neat way of describing this: Return on […]

By Dawn Woollam  |  Hospitality & Tourism Development Consultant  |  March 2026 Every year, the same moment arrives. Families start searching, schools send newsletters home, and the algorithms surface lambs, willow wreaths and painted eggs. The gap between supermarket launch (now during advent…) and family Easter-break planning is narrowing – and for rural estates and […]

Some diversification or project opportunities do not need to be hunted for. They reveal themselves in the working relationships farms already have with businesses nearby. With one of our current client instructions, a long‑running, practical connection between a family farm and a local food producer, originally centred around handling wastewater, created the space for a […]

From April 2026, the rules around Inheritance Tax (IHT) relief for farmers and business owners will change in a meaningful way. The government has confirmed that the threshold at which 100% Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) applies will increase from £1 million to £2.5 million per estate, with the allowance transferable […]

Just before Christmas (2025), Government published a consultation on proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), alongside draft policy wording. At face value, this can feel like another policy update in a busy cycle of planning reform. In practice, the draft is more meaningful for rural businesses than it might first appear. It […]