Agricultural Occupancy Condition

[Kendodd]

Why?
I could understand the point of them if they were small workers cottages, in a similar way some houses are subject to only local residents buying conditions, this reduces the price in a similar way an AOC does. AOC is always massive great houses though (well, I've never seen otherwise) very often without any land, so it's not the farm they're buying. If you can afford to spend one million plus on a house, why should you get to buy it cheap? Just seen one including six holiday cottages wtf!

For information, if you don't know, this is what I'm talking about.
“The occupation of the dwelling shall be limited to a person solely or mainly employed in the locality in agriculture as defined in section 336 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, or forestry or a dependant of such a person residing with him or her or a widow or widower of such a person”.

I very rarely see houses without land being subject to an AOC? Its normally farms or smallholdings. Fwiw I think it's really important that a good number of smallholdings in particular ARE subject to AOC to stop them all just becoming livery yards or private playgrounds (I'm looking at you Ed Sheeran)

I guess if individual houses are subject to AOC then it prevents ridiculous price inflation, and these houses are then still accessible to local extended farming families, rather than all being snapped up by relocators.

I’ve never seen a house with an AOC without land of some sort

But some farmer family members managed to get planning for a house for their son on the condition it had an AOC, which is fine because he works on the family farm up the road.

But I guess when his parents die and he moves into the main farm house, he might want to sell his current house, and the AOC will still be attached.

It’s definitely not worth a million pounds, but it isn’t a typical farm house or workers cottage

I've only seen small farmhouses with an occupancy condition - my friend has that condition on the flat over her garage (she lives in the main, not at all grand, house and they have a few acres). She lets it to a woman who works on their land part time.

My friend's house has one. It is a fairly ordinary 3 bed bungalow on about 2 acres of land. She is a farm secretary and her husband works in the family business producing reed.

All the ones I know of are small, except one which still isn't a £1million house! They don't necessarily have land with them as, over time from when the house was granted planning permission with the occupancy condition, the original farmhouse and land have been sold off, but the clause remains on the farmer workers/child of farmers house. Also, they were often granted for farming activities involving livestock, as the theory was that the farmer needed to be near their stock. So near us there were a number of small pig units which managed to get a house built, when they wouldn't normally have done so, but had very little land with them.
In the case of a house with holiday cottages, if the original house was granted planning based on Agricultural Occupancy and then built holiday cottages and sold off remaining land the clause would remain. To buy it you'd have to be involved in agriculture, and it's only cheaper because there is a very limited market that are eligible to buy them. And I don't know any farm/land workers who could afford £1 million houses!

The clue is in the final part of the clause. Retirement homes built by well to do farmers. My Mum has a lovely architect designed house built on the family farm that has an AOC. The only land associated with it is the garden. Mum and Dad built it as their retirement home.

Round is.... you buy a field, make up a fictional business plan, get permission with an agri tie, build house, continue with your usual (non-rural) occupation and after 15 years apply to have the clause removed. If you can sell off some land siting need for capital that’ll be fine rs: planning. Then you have successfully built on greenbelt agricultural land and can sell as a “hobby farm”, or horsey people at vastly profitable amount.

once the claus is on the property its hard to remove it!
seems easier for rich people (developers) to get it removed.

We see loads of them around here when we've been searching, but none were £1 million houses. They are usually built on farm land to get around planning and then sold off separately (without the land). It's for a 'local person working in agriculture' as well as someone actually working the land. Though even the properties we've been looking at, which have 10 acres or so, you couldn't actually make any sort of living farming such a small piece of land. It's a dumb loophole that seems to cause more problems that it's work, I think, as very hard to sell those properties.

Round our way, it seems relatively easy to remove the Claus if you wait a few years. It’s a shockingly bad loop-hole imo.