Listen to Estate Matters podcast featuring CLA President Victoria Vyvyan
Victoria talks to podcast host Anna Byles about the family business, how the new government can work with the countryside and her priorities for the future
CLA President and Cornish rural estate owner Victoria Vyvyan talks about the new Labour government, how proposed policies for the rural economy could affect members and Trelowarren Estate on the Estate Matters podcast.
The monthly podcast by KOR Communications speaks to landowners, estates and rural business entrepreneurs about the challenges and opportunities facing the rural economy and finds out more about the story behind their business.
Speaking to podcast host Anna Byles, Victoria says she believes the new government and its Defra team are listening to voices from the countryside in important policy areas, including planning, farming and energy.
But she cautioned that the CLA would strongly oppose measures that bring in punishing land taxes and an extension of compulsory purchase orders to boost housebuilding.
We can go to government and say, ‘these things that need doing, we can do them, but you need to work to ensure it works for our businesses’
She says farming and rural businesses operate on the principle of a three-legged stool made up of people, profit and planet – growing food, providing energy and space for homes and helping to restored depleted nature.
She says one of the biggest concerns CLA members have are potential changes to the tax relief when farms are passed between generations, because the land that is the principal asset in many farm businesses. “If you tax land on death, for these multi-generational businesses that means you are going to have to sell land and those family land holdings […] their capacity to be a proper business is diminished.”
Discussion then turned to Trelowarren, situated on the south bank of the Helford Estuary, which has a farm growing silage and brassicas, a forestry operation, 20 holiday lets, a restaurant and a café and is also developing a biodiversity net gain business, helping others to offset their carbon emissions.
She admits when the couple took on the estate there were doubts about whether it would be viable in the modern era. However, hard work and innovation paid off.
Victoria says: “We were young so, you know, we thought we could conquer the world; we were absolutely not afraid of hard work, and we wanted to recreate something of the original 1066 land holding we’ve got here. We’re not afraid of eating flint soup either – we’re not expensive people to keep.”
On her priorities for the future, she highlights the need for the devolved government in Wales to learn from its earlier mistakes on agricultural policy and start working with the farming community. She also wants to see the government in Westminster reach out to the regions and its minorities.