Agricultural Land in UK Law

You have to look at transactions individually, component transaction by component transaction. They may be linked in the sense that one would not have happened without the other, but they remain distinct transactions nonetheless. Only if one transaction is merely ancillary to a main transaction can one disregard the distinct nature of each transaction (see Card Protection Plan v CCE Case C-349/96) [1999] STC 270, para. 29) If that were not so, the principle of neutrality would be violated.

There remains the question whether the cottage, by itself, was "used for agriculture" (which I take to mean "used for the purpose of agriculture" or "used in connection with agriculture") so as to constitute agricultural land. Taking, then, the history of this cottage into account, its situation and the purpose for which it was let to the Defendant it follows almost inevitably, as I think, that it is "agricultural land" and that the learned Judge was right in so deciding.

Nobody can be unaware that the law relating to tenancies of agricultural land is one of considerable political import and delicacy and I am very reluctant to believe that the particular aspect of this law which relates to sub-tenancies, treated with evident circumspection in 1948, would have been dealt with in a general provision such as appears in section 41 of the Act of 1954.

In its context "occupied together with agricultural land" may connote more than common ownership. My impression on reading the definition of "agricultural buildings" is that it was an attempt by the draftsman to define a farm in statutory language and that it was intended to include buildings used and occupied together with the land for the purpose of farming the land, not buildings far distant and not used in connection with an operation on the land even though owned by the same person.

As I suggested in the course of the argument, I think for that purpose whatthe local authority are entitled to look at is the whole of the area which was used for a particular purpose including any part of that area whose use was incidental to or ancillary to the achievement of that purpose.

There may be something that is in the nature of an unincorporated partnership of individual farmers, or there may be rateable occupation by a committee of individuals who are appointed by the occupiers of the several farms, or there may be a body corporate.