Jeremy's Blog 13th September 2024: A Time of Suspense

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 13th September 2024

The autumn starts with the sense of much business caught in a holding pattern; even, or especially, the weather delaying the end of harvest, complicating field work and autumn establishment. In public life, many policy decisions are awaited, some necessarily taking time, others at risk of drifting for want of focus or resource.

Tax and spending decisions remain for the Budgets of this October and next March, with a repeated official emphasis on a bleak background. While clients wait or position themselves ahead of possible capital tax changes, with the passing weeks intensifying speculation, government departments are contending with the Treasury over spending plans with echoes spilling over into public debate. Speculation fills the extended vacuum.

We do not know when we might be told the scale of agricultural support money, for each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the legacy money having been protected in cash terms until the end of this year. Farming and environmental bodies press for large increases, finding arguments for the ear of this government. The press has stories of a possible reduction, whether just in this year or for the coming years. This may simply echo arguments in government or fears outside it, perhaps just part of the lobbying processes to protect or promote spending. The seven weeks to the Budget will see all pressing their cases more intensely.

In England, where the election left much business unfinished, we wait on decisions over Higher Tier, then as the first round of Landscape Recovery agreements reach their critical second anniversary and where the third round of the Slurry Infrastructure Grant might be. The future Sustainable Farming Scheme for Wales has been deferred to 2026 and remains the subject of long discussions. Scotland’s Rural Support Plan setting out its future regime with decisions, resources and implementation seems no nearer with change moving later in the decade. Northern Ireland may now have a minister but seems no further forward in implementing the timetabled moves from Basic Payment. The devolved governments also wait on the agricultural budget decision.

Back to tax, the sudden election left in suspense the March Budget proposal to extend APR to cover farmland moved into environmental commitments, giving confidence to landowners with no tax cost. The new Government has adopted the inheritance of targets but is reviewing how they might be met, including the interaction with development. Its strongest environmental focus has been on climate change and carbon, as shown by the weight given to carbon in the four solar farm decisions over some 9,500 acres, then followed by issues with the water companies.

The government’s strongest moves have been in laying out a strong position on planning, accelerating housing and infrastructure, making councils delivery agents for national development policies. With only two months down, this is the battle plan (awaiting the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the December NPPF) but barely yet the battle – where plans meet reality and implementation finds issues. Reality here includes social resistance to development with its political expression and litigation, the bureaucratic facts of the planning process however reformed and the competing calls on limited construction capacity.

All the while the clock ticks. The last Parliament was robbed of time by the pandemic and to an extent by the invasion of Ukraine. This Parliament may be luckier, though unforeseen events are always likely. But the government has large targets and no more than 60 months of which two are now gone.