A tenant farmer facing immediate eviction with minimal compensation has won an 11th-hour reprieve in a case that has galvanised the land rights movement in Scotland.
Andrew Stoddart announced on Thursday – the day before his family’s scheduled eviction from Coulston Mains, East Lothian, which he has farmed for 22 years – that the departure date had been postponed until January and a settlement agreed after last-minute mediation with his landlord.
In a case that focused public attention on the legislative mire that affects farming families across the country, Stoddart and his family were due to be evicted with minimal compensation despite having invested more than £500,000 in improvements, to comply with a Scottish land court ruling last year.
Stoddart said the settlement had been reached “to protect my family from further anxiety” and that the extended period of occupancy would allow him to remove his animals and dispose of equipment to better advantage.
He said: “After 22 years, against considerable odds, I have left this farm better than I found it. It has been a hard struggle at times, and I want to pay tribute to my wife, Claire, who has shared the burden with me. We probably should have left many years ago when difficulties with the landlords began, but we never suspected it would end like this.
“The laws which allow landlords to arbitrarily end tenancies in order to access farming subsidies directly need to be amended. All we ever wanted was just to farm this place and bring up our girls in this community which we love.”
Stoddart thanked his “loyal employees” who had stuck by him throughout the extended legal battle, as well as the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association (STFA) and land reformers who have campaigned on his behalf. There have been a series of protests at the Holyrood parliament, and a petition gathered tens of thousands of signatures.
He concluded: “We will leave East Lothian with many happy memories, on our way to a new beginning as yet unknown.”
Seven other tenant farmers face the same fate as Stoddart, in the latest round of a tortuous legal battle dating to 2003 and prompted initially by landowner greed and government incompetence.
Lesley Riddoch, of the campaign group Our Land, gave the Stoddart settlement a guarded welcome. She said: “Andrew finally has some compensation for his 22 years of work and improvement at Coulston Mains farm and two more months to sell off his farm equipment and find a new job and home. He also knows that his neighbours and folk he has never even met care deeply about his situation and that of his wife, three daughters and the families of his staff.
“Once his domestic situation is sorted I hope Andrew will become a strong voice in the growing movement for effective land reform, which must include some sort of right to buy for tenant farmers, and I hope other tenant farmers in similar circumstances take comfort from this campaign, which managed to get a better deal for the Stoddarts.”
Angus McCall, director of the STFA, said: “We hope lessons will be learned and the remaining seven tenants and families in the same situation will not be expected to suffer as much worry and stress as the Stoddarts.
“There are still a large number of tenants on short-term agreements who are just as vulnerable to having their tenure cut short at the drop of a hat. This insecurity is something that must be tackled as Scotland contemplates land and tenancy reform over the next few years.”
Experts believe the simplest solution is to create a right to buy for tenant farmers, akin to that which resolved Ireland’s longstanding land problems more than a century ago. Indeed, this was recommended by the land reform review group, set up by the Scottish government, in 2014.
But the Scottish government dropped this proposal from its current land reform bill. Campaigners believe this was because it feared further legal challenge. Our Land wants the Scottish government to introduce a right to buy for tenant farmers in the current bill or to include it in the SNP’s manifesto for next May’s Holyrood elections.
