Instone Court

[Farmers Guide @FarmersGuide]

Attendees at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) event, including members of the Hawkstone team and local hop growers, came together to discuss how the future of British beer can be safeguarded in the face of climate change, rising costs, and increasing supply-chain pressures 🍺

➡️ https://t.co/esutvsmo94

#BritishBeer #RoyalAgriculturalUniversity #Hawkstone #Clarkson #JeremyClarkson #HopGrowers #BritishHops

🫵Join thousands of farmers getting the agri news that matters first - https://t.co/vvU9PZLPjO

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

@loosecollie Surely that is the breed not where it is bred?

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

@NigelSommelier Had the pleasure of visiting delirium and st bernabus in the summer

[Louise Manning @foodsafetyljm]

Great to hear @InstoneCourt on Farming Today talking about hop growing. Love the produce in the vending machines

[Briggs on Beer @BriggsonBeer]

Very worrying that 35% of British Institute of Innkeeping members have said they could be forced to close their doors if the #Government doesn’t reduce the tax burden at the Autumn Budget. 🙏🏻😔

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

Typical. Day after we finish, a true hoppicking morning as the mist sits in the Frome valley.

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

@NigelSommelier Pilgrim.
Not the best season in the midlands. We'll get it right next year.

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

Last hops of the season. We'll finish picking tomorrow.

[Nigel Sadler @NigelSommelier]

Support #pubs. Drink plenty of Cask Ale, responsibly obvs. 🍻😊

[martin williams @loosecollie]

Survey here for all family businesses.
What are your concerns?
Please take a minute ⬇️⬇️
@FamilyBizPaul
@StevenJGPerez
@agricontract @TWBFarms
@wheat_daddy
https://t.co/326EeWsbJF

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

@denny_robert 🤣🤣🤣😱

[The Independent @Independent]

Almost 400 UK pubs set to close in 2025 due to ‘high taxes and business rates’ https://t.co/RfDaKe36Iq

[Instone Court @InstoneCourt]

@loosecollie @CommonsEFRA Saw that you were strategically positioned!

[martin williams @loosecollie]

Well worth a watch.
@CommonsEFRA
Hosting the Minister and asking about agriculture, profitability, eu trade deal and other items in his portfolio.
https://t.co/518ePsBKrE - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee https://t.co/gywjjPHiTr

Shared via the Google App

[Charles Faram @CharlesFaram]

Faram's Beth and Paul had an amazing time at Heriot-Watt University last week, hosting an AromaFest®! 🌿 It was a pleasure to spread the word to the next generation of brewers about our Hop Development Programme, while showcasing some brilliant examples, and gaining some most important assessment feedback! 🌱 Cheers to the hops of the future! 🍺

#AromaFest® #FutureOfBrewing

[No Farmers, No Food @NoFarmsNoFoods]

It’s worth watching Ed Conway’s superb analysis of ‘farmageddon’.
It’s not just inheritance tax that is putting farmers into financial jeopardy. The UK farming sector is under risk from a multitude of issues including rising food imports from abroad, cuts to countryside flood protection, unfair supermarket purchase prices and diminishing government subsidies for actual food production.

[LBC @LBC]

‘You demonstrate the same lack of understanding the treasury shows.’

Tory MP @Ashley7Fox responds to the idea that farmers should stomach the government’s inheritance tax increases.

[D'Tractor Mark @hubmaker]

A timely read given the outcome of the meeting with the treasury. #farming #iht
https://t.co/Ottqb5JapR

[Stuart @StuartMaggs]

Refresher and update on changes to APR/BPR for inheritance tax

The changes proposed to APR & BPR will raise around £200m a year from farming by 2028/29, suggested Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates on Saturday, with another £300m or so from other family businesses, and from IHT avoidance schemes. This seems the right sort of ballpark to me.

Rumour suggests that this draft policy was kicking around the Treasury for a while with no real political appetite for it. But with support from Arun Advani of CenTax, it was picked up by Rachel Reeves and announced in her Budget. Initially we were told this was about preventing tax avoidance, but then the PM explained to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee that it had no such underlying policy - it was just a money raiser. Nobody had done an impact assessment before introducing the policy to understand whether it might in fact severely damage critical industries.

If they had, they would have found out that paring back APR and BPR threatens continuation of family businesses who have to find 20% or so of their value every generation to pay in tax. This jeopardises investment, growth and employment within those businesses.

Ministers took the unusual step of recommending that people take tax planning advice to mitigate the impact. However elderly and infirm business owners, and those with limited income, may not have time or may not be able to plan to protect their business.

In particular, analysis shows that even if a typical family farm used its entire income for a decade it still wouldn’t be able to afford the proposed tax without selling land. Partly, this is because food production has very tight margin. Partly because there are many pressures on land – development, renewables, food production, environmental benefits – and so land values are much higher than you might expect using normal earnings multipliers. Regardless, farmers and their advisors were shocked to see an unaffordable tax charge being proposed that would cripple their business following a death.

Tax experts explained that, luckily, the Treasury could avoid most negative impacts without significantly reducing the tax take by slightly retargeting the proposal. Ideas have been suggested like reducing the relief but adding a clawback arrangement, so that tax falls due when assets are sold, not on death. That would protect growth, investment and productivity across the OMB sector, all of which are at the heart of the Chancellor’s agenda.

Disappointingly the Treasury flatly refused to consult on improvements. As a result, farmers have been protesting since the Budget, trying to convey that this proposal severely threatens the future of their business.

On Tuesday 18th February the NFU and others are finally meeting with Minister James Murray (who gave the keynote speech at the launch of CenTax in November 2024) to try to persuade him that a shift in implementation of this policy is in everyone’s interest. Given his link to CenTax and its support for this policy, I am not confident of their success, but the meeting is a positive step.

I remain hopeful that common sense and pragmatism can triumph over ideology.

[Anna Longthorp @AnnaLongthorp]

Had sooo many conversations about #FamilyFarmTax
What still confuses the life out of me is why there aren’t more family businesses standing up against changes to #BPR
I can only surmise that farmers are so used to being 💩on by gov they HAVE to be politically engaged ALL THE TIME