Students at University of Manchester on rent strike over cost of living crisis

Organisers say they are seeking 30% monthly cut and that more than 150 people have signed up
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/09/students-at-university-of-manchester-on-rent-strike-over-cost-of-living-crisis
The Guardian, Mon 9th Jan 2023

Hundreds of students in halls of residence at the University of Manchester are withholding their rent payments this month over the cost of living crisis.

The students are seeking to pressure their university into offering a 30% cut on monthly rent payments, including a rebate for fees already paid, which they claim have become unaffordable.

The organisers said: “We know that the university can do much more to materially help students deal with this crisis. The money is there to support UoM students without ripping us off.”
The organisers said that more than 150 students have signed up to take part so far, of whom some had already cancelled their direct debits while others would manually withhold their rent payment on the week of 19 January.

They said this amounted to more than £100,000, since average payments for the spring term are about £1,800, although the organisers are anticipating that more than £300,000 could be withheld.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics in November found half of all students in England were facing financial difficulties, with a quarter taking on additional debts and three in 10 skipping lectures and tutorials to cut costs.

Fraser McGuire, a first year history and politics student, said he was moved to help organise the strike after realising he would be left to live off £200 from his maintenance loan for four months after paying rent.

He said students felt “worried, stressed, angry and powerless”. “Lots are in a lot of financial difficulty. Out of a lot of people’s maintenance loan payments, 70, 80, 90% of that goes on rent. Students are working up to full-time hours to help get them through their studies,” he added.

He said the organisers had taken tips from the students who went on strike in 2020, securing a 30% rebate worth £4m from the university to compensate them for their dissatisfaction with their pandemic experience, and they were in talks with students at other universities.

Manchester students are also asking for no further increases in rent over the next three years, and for 40% of halls to meet the National Union of Students’ definition of affordability, which is 50% of the highest student maintenance loan. They believe that this could be funded through Manchester’s record £119.7m surplus.

The affordability of student accommodation is a problem across universities as rents have risen far more rapidly than inflation. Estimates by the NUS and the student housing charity Unipol suggest average costs have risen by 60% over the past decade to reach £7,347, surpassing the average £6,900 student maintenance loan.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said the university had implemented a £9m range of measures to help students with the cost of living crisis, including £2,000 support payments, £170 for every student and cheaper food options.

He added that rents in university halls included bills and were lower than similar private sector accommodation, with increases in 2022-23 between 1.5% and 6%.

He said: “We will do everything we can to support students who are unable to pay their rent and urge anyone struggling to speak to us as soon as possible. We are not currently aware of any students refusing to pay their rent but are aware of recent online comments made by a small number of campaigners.”

Dutch farmers battle technocratic forces driving them into oblivion

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/08/dutch-farmers-technocratic-plan/

Nash Landesman – December 8, 2022

Dutch farmers are in open struggle against a cartel of multinational corporations, Davos-aligned parties and NGOs seeking control over the global food supply. They are sweeping the culture from the land, a farmer laments.

HEERENVEEN, NETHERLANDS The Netherlands is a patchwork of quaint towns and cities interwoven with flat expanses of immaculately-kept green agricultural pasture. The road and rail infrastructure are near-flawless. You could search for weeks without finding a pothole. It is one of the most expensive countries in the world, and makes some of the best steak, cheese, yogurt and milk on the planet. The land is fertile, valuable, and strategically located with easy access to the north Atlantic coast. So, for these reasons and more, legions of committees composed of unelected, largely unknown figures serving on the boards of an interwoven network of even lesser known private and multilateral bodies, insists on seizing it all, on account of saving the planet from its deadliest enemy: man himself. Their target: the Dutch farmer. They are slowly killing us with regulation, one farmer told The Grayzone. It is death by a thousand paper-cuts, or The Art of War by the modern technocrat.

First, some background: Holland exports the most food on earth, behind only America, on a landmass roughly the size of Indiana. Farmers the world over come to study Dutch techniques. The country embraces whats known as the Mansholt theorya philosophy of ensuring food security and self-sufficiency that emerged from the second world war as a response to Nazi-imposed famine. To stave-off a similar tragedy, Dutch agriculture embraces the Haber-Bosch process, a method of infusing fertilizer with nitrogen to increase yield efficiency. Invented in the early 1900s by a pair of Nobel Prize-winning chemists, Haber-Bosch is responsible for the existence of half the worlds population today (and is known in Malthusian circles as the detonator of the population explosion), thanks to its ability to grow more food on less land.

But now global bodies like the World Banks Climate Smart Agriculture program, the UNs protected area initiatives, the European Commission and armies of well-funded NGOs are executing a wholly-comprehensive platform targeting Dutch farmers restricting both organic and artificial fertilizer use while asserting biodiversity protection as the pretext for snatching land from the productive.

Dutch farmers, in protest, have driven tractors to the Hague, tossed flaming trash onto the roads and sprayed manure across government buildings.

Its worth reemphasizing that the Dutch government is carrying out the same radical experiment conducted in Sri Lanka earlier this year eliminating nitrogen-based fertilizer, the basis of modern survival. In the southeast Asian country, it led to a famine that toppled the government. The Sri Lankan disaster fronted a simple premise: replace something with nothing. And to eliminate Russian gas from the geopolitical scene. The Colombo declaration, signed in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2019, celebrated the end of food security and sovereignty, offering in its place a model for import-dependency and agricultural destruction now being imposed on the Dutch.

They are sweeping the culture from the land, says Sieta Van Keimpema, a sturdy 6-foot Dutchwoman in her 50s with short, wavy black hair. She is head of the European Milk Board, and leader of the Dutch farmers de-facto political arm, Farmers Defense Force (FDF).

Our government has made laws and laws that put us in a corner that you cannot come back from, she says. If people cannot put food on the table you get riots. You get an unstable society. I dont see the benefits to this. Her group, Farmers Defense Force, is characterized as vigilante populist heroes by some; and as troublemakers responsible for sparking the protests by others. FDF originated after environmental activists, Meat the Victims, forcefully occupied a pig farm in a small Dutch town in 2019. Instead of taking action, police sent in negotiators, prolonging the ordeal. FDF subsequently created a Bat Signal whereby farmers can call on a special WhatsApp group to rally others to come to the rescue.

When they arent producing food, members can be found battling Brussels or butting heads in the Hague. We have a government spending 25 billion euros to reduce agricultural production, Sieta says, confirming official policy. According to heavily-redacted European Commission documents, the goal is terminating farms through overregulation, deploying mandatory buyouts if necessary.

Official justifications are not up for debate. Take some of the most insulting regulations, made in the name of flood prevention, a puzzle the Dutch have solved since the countrys inception, erecting dykes, walls, levies and canals to build a civilization out of the oceans (as half of Holland lies below sea-level). In its green manifesto, the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency preaches that more radical policies are needed, particularly for flood protectionThe main emphasis is on the planet dimensiona Netherlands that is more sustainable and Future-Proof. Accordingly, some computer models predict with 80% certainty a sea-level rise of 20 meters within the next century, after having risen 2 cm across the last one.

A related justification is that nitrogen leakage caused by agriculture makes Dutch tap water undrinkable, and so farming must be eliminated. The reality is that Hollands tap water was awarded second best on the continent by the European Water Awards; behind Austria, in a debatable placement. Dutch drinking water is so crisp and clean, it almost makes Evian taste like toilet sludge. The real problem: Holland is 50% composed of mostly independently-owned agricultural operations, and they occupy prime real-estate.

The Dutch environmental report further seems to justify what many have been speculating: The inflow of foreign migrants [caused in no small part by U.S. wars] feeds the need for expansion, calling for the elimination of 300,000 hectares of farmland between now and 2040. This will be initiated by the conversion of agricultural land into nature conservation areas, without irony. Additionally, rich people need second homes, since it is assumed that families with a high income will opt to live in green areas. Dutch households display a marked preference for single-family homes with a garden. The Dutch concept of the ideal home will shift, possibly in the direction of gated communities, [and] more second home ownership.

To nobodys surprise, housing developers subsidized by the government and working with the Society for Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands, have already begun to erect houses in protected areas, on lands wrested from farmers.

In the Netherlands around 800,000 people work in agriculture. If you reduce half the sector theres not critical mass anymore to continue, Sieta explains. The big dairies need a certain amount of milk to have a viable cost priceI think we are the only country in the world that has a minister of nitrogenwho really doesnt know what shes talking about. She admitted I really dont know what Im saying. I say, go home, because what shes doing is destroying a whole sector.

Meanwhile, many farmers have reached consensus about the forces they believe to be behind the attack on their livelihoods.

Left-wing parties like Democrats 66, which promises, well be working towards reducing the cattle population by half, are very close to Klaus Schwab, Sieta says. They go to Davos and dont deny it. Its a fact that the WEF [World Economic Forum/Davos Group] is pushing legislation that isnt decided in a democratic way. If you comment on that, as I did in the meeting, the civil servants get really aggressive. The Netherlands is pushing legislation that has never been discussed in the parliament. Mention that the air is comprised of 85% nitrogen, and youre slammed as a climate denier.

The D for democracy has become dictation. They have no shame, Sieta says. The government has given an enormous subsidy to artificial meat; lab meat, and theyre calling it future food. But Im not going to eat insects. Im going to eat beef and chicken. The bottom line, according to Sieta: They produce hot air, we produce food on the tableThey dont want innovation, they want buyouts.

Indeed, Hollands world-famous agricultural innovation hub, Wageningen University, the Stanford /Silicon Valley of farming, has ceased developing techniques that help farmers. Instead theyre now focused on producing bugs for human consumption. The World Economic Forum promote this agenda with ads featuring Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman chomping down on a bowl of crickets, putting an Aussie-accented celebrity glow on a grim and deeply disturbing future.

The farmers have seen what is happening with the World Economic Forum, with Bill Gates, etcthats why they are so active, Sieta adds. They know that what they are fighting is a very strong lobby of multinationals who really want to control food. After the war we decided we should never have hunger again, to produce as much food as possible and to use nitrogen and fertilizer to do it. But now they are pushing an agenda very similar to what Hitler wanted. If you control food then you control everything.

The Dutch government has teamed up with pools of private capital and NGOs linked to international institutions to mobilize over $25 billion to terminate Dutch farmers. One group in particular strikes fear into the heart of farmers: the relentless, racketeering eco-lobby, MOBilization for the Environment, known as MOB.

We have MOB. When we go to court we lose because of legislation; the provinces will fight the MOB. MOB is fighting the provinces, Sieta says. It all started in may 2019 when the court decided our program for nitrogen was not good. They made us guinea pigs, like in Sri Lanka.

MOB has a superpower: to sniff-out any leeway that a Dutch provincial government may be offering to a farmer to aid in his survival, and to sue that government into imposing more rules, harsher restrictions, tighter regulations until his existence is terminated.

Mainline Dutch media called MOBs leader, Johan Vollenbroek, the most hated man in the Netherlands by some. And on the groups dominance over recent nitrogen negations:  MOB is of course not in charge; the cabinet will eventually have to make the decision. But MOB and a number of other nature organizations do have an important means of pressure: lawsuits. In recent years they have carried hundreds of them and very often the judges proved them right.

MOBs mandate runs from the petty theyll sue to reject a single farms grazing application to the grandiose, setting new and major national legal precedents, like revamping the countrys entire nitrogen program in 2019. Governments fear them. Farmers cannot stop them. And this is how Vollenbroek supposedly spends his retirement. Of course he is likely an agent of those who wrote the treaties to begin with.

While Vollenbroek applauds the fact that five Dutch farms are destroyed each day, he also argues that more work is needed to be done. Vollenbroek receives death threats and lives most of the time in France, according to reports. Dutch royalty, the Order of Orange-Nassau, has even knighted Vollenbroek for his efforts against farming. He is not a lawyer. Nor an activist. He is a corporate chemical engineer and somehow a treaty expert who consults EU nations on how to override their own laws in obedience to a galaxy of global treaties written over three decades ago at the 1991 Rio Earth Summit. Every country has its own versions of such groups built-into the framework of the global system: inside-experts posing as environmentalists to enforce or extend vaguely-written treaties for the sake of opportunistic exploitation, fulfilling geopolitical goals and long-term plans. But in Holland, MOB has a track record for setting anti-farming precedents that stick.

As Vollenbroek stated, Once youve concluded a treaty, you cant just break it open and negotiate againThe livestock population simply has to be drastically reduced, a large number of farmers have to stop There is no alternative.

MOB is responsible for revoking thousands of Dutch farming permits in court. According to part of MOBs lengthly mission statement/public manifesto, translated from Dutch:

I am ashamed to be Dutch. Time is running out, especially for the people of the rich countries, to open their eyes to a disturbing truth: we have colonized the future. The Netherlands has become a developing country in terms of environmental sustainability. The pariah of Europe.

It is on this basis that MOB has singled out farmers as the main source of the nations supposed environmental problems. They have been ringing this same alarm bell for thirty years now, ever since the group was founded in the early 1990s. And yet somehow, the Netherlands still stands.

Four Dutch farmers

Johan/Paula: Theyve left us with no room to move into the future

From an environmental perspective, no country on earth could be less environmentally menacing than Holland.

Near the Dutch town of Emmen, along the German border, Johan and his wife Paula struggle to survive as 5^th generation dairy farmers. Milk runs through my veins, Johan says, standing with his hands on his hips, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette out back behind his shabby house. Home is where the cows are. Yet Johans down-home wisdom and minimalistic way of life are being eradicated, as his wife, Paula, chimes in: They are slowly killing us with more rules and regulations. Theyve left us with no room to move into the future.

The family plan to flee to Ireland where they perceive climate regulation to be less stringent. Their children, enrolled in agricultural school, will not be able to inherit the family farm as intended. Under a new Dutch law, once you stop farming, you and your entire kin are forever banned from farming in the Netherlands again.

The family is not being offered a buyout because their land falls within a so-called protected area, making it illegal to milk cows or perform agricultural activity under the EU/World Banks GEF (Global Environmental Facility) Natura 2000 treaty. They are also forbidden from planting corn until late fall, when the crop is no longer viable.

There is a push pull dynamic that offers farmers some breathing room, provided they can pay for it. You can buy carbon and phosphate offset rights, giving the rich a chance to prosper in the new green economy. But every time they make an allowance, they take it back, Paula says, pointing to the Dutch governments recent encouragement of farmers to build specialized, $100,000 mechanical barn floors to separate fecal matter from urine (thus reducing ammonia).

The floor allowance held up briefly, with farmers taking out huge loans to build them. But soon enough, the litigious MOB came and argued it wasnt good enough, Johan says. They won the court battle. If you pay the MOB enough money they will back off. Thats why theyre called the mob, after all, he laughs.

The government has already snatched a parcel of his familys property due to its being within 30 meters of a protected watershed. Soon its going to be 40 meters, then 400, Paula says. Eventually they will take everything.

Nelly: There have been many suicides. People get sick and ill and depressed.

In the Friesian town of Hoogeveen, resides Nelly, a 73-year-old champion horse-breeder and dairy farmer. She says she is tired of fighting both breast cancer and overregulation. Nelly receives regular control checks by bureaucrats visiting her farm up to five times a week, ensuring her withering operation abide by increasingly unrealistic standards. They check for everything. Ear tags, manure, cows, your yard. Now you need a permit to mow grass between stones, which is totally crazy since it has nothing to do with dairy farming.

Her farm requires an endless array of new permits just to function, and everything she does is tracked. The cows have the ear tags and the horses have a transponder under their skin, registered in the system. The government wants to know where everything is, so if a horse has to go to a training stable, we have to put it in the computer so they can see, she says, pointing to an Excel sheet on her laptop. They make the rules stronger and stronger. It gets harder and harder to survive. Soon, Nelly surmises, we will need a permit to ride our own horses. Things are heading in that direction. The weeds between boulders in her front yard have grown unwieldy, as Nelly has not yet received her renewed mowing permit for the year.

The irony, of course, as Nelly explains, is that the government says we need to get rid of the farmers, that we need nature; but if they send the farmers away then it will be one big mess. We do not only milk cows, but we keep our pastures and the forest in good condition. Everything is kept neat by the farmers.

Nellys farm is emptier than usual, due to a new law stating that you can keep no more than 1.5 cows per hectare, an impossibly small number down from four. The regulation favoring large landowners has already cost Nelly a third of her cows.

We have to sell 17 cows out of 55 and a heifer counts as two, she says. We live in the middle of a forest and have only a few hectares out front so we cannot use pasture, but we have loads of land. If we dont give it up, they take it away from our milking money. They know how to find you.

The nature of the project is not lost on Nelly. Holland wants to be the best little boy out of the class, she says. We start with this nonsense and the other countries are following. They are now talking about nitrogen, phosphates.

Simply put, they just draw a map and say how many cows should go there. You are not allowed to spread manure, even organic. There have been many suicides. People get sick and ill and depressed. What people do not understand is that farming is a way of life.

Nellys farm is deemed insufficient nature by the UN/World Banks development plan, its return to nature ethos embodied in a program called re-wilding, under which it is illegal to harm predators. So, last month, wolves ate four of Nellys cows, including one calf, and bit one of her prized filly horses in the leg, forcing Nelly to put it down. Shoot a deadly wolf, go to jail. Thats just the way things go around here.

Jos: Theres nothing scientific about it whatever.

Still, other farmers remain defiant. We will win, asserts a rangy, 67, thirty-something Jos Ubels, standing on his beef cattle ranch in denim overalls, his face and arms covered in dirt and mud and grime. Jos makes no apologies, offering a simple critique of the governments policies: Its hideous, its crazy what theyre imposing. Theres nothing logical about it. Mr. Ubels cows live better than many people. They are free to graze in the sun most of the time, before it all ends in one bad day.

As Jos explains, They dont want nitrogen because certain specific plants hate nitrogen; they only grow on poor soils, so they want the soil to be poor. And they are saying that the farmers are causing the soil to get richer. So, if youre farming more effectively than what is allowed, youre in trouble.

Official logic is reason inverted: The growth of obscure plants supersedes food production.

The threat posed by nitrogen, a gas that returns to the ground to feed nutrients in the soil, is grossly overstated if not wholly fictitious. As Jos notes: Its stupid because nitrogen is actually circular. In farming its absorbed back into the soil. But they only take into account the output. And they use flawed computer models to calculate this. Theres nothing scientific about it whatsoever.

Across the West, as we have seen with wildly inaccurate Covid predictions, flawed computer models have become a stand-in for science, not a supplement to it. But this is about politics, so those on the take are indifferent to reason, let alone to the fate of Dutch agriculture.

If you have people who live on the government payroll, they dont have to produce anything, says Jos. They can just dream all day about idealistic solutions for problems that dont exist. If you ask them about real problems, they say its not our problem and they dont have a solution. Everything is the fault of the farmers.

Compounding the crisis confronting the farmers is a massive, growing fertilizer shortage. Within 1 or 2 months there will be no fertilizer in Europe, Jos predicts, So you can try to buy it but you cant find any. They are using the last of what they have in store. The price is 100x higher than it used to be. This will create a crisis because the demand is very high and there will be nothing left in stock. We need fertilizer but there is no production and no import because the biggest importer was Russia. Theres not enough gas.

He adds that the government still buys the very same Russian gas, only these days through middle-men at huge markups on the spot market.

The WEF [World Economic Forum] is radically trying to change the world, Jos notes. And their front man Klaus Schwab says in the end you will own nothing. The funny thing is that he will own everything. The rules they are coming up with are sick. Thats why you see the upside-down flags, its a sign of distress. Its to show the people of the Netherlands dont support this.

Unfortunately, it seems the environmental lawyers of the mobilization for the environment (MOB) have the know-how (and funding) to routinely defend anti-farming laws successfully in court.

Our government made some stupid laws. So for a smart lawyer from MOB, they know how to break down the laws because they are not very well constructed. And they do this on a regular basis. The government already lost four cases against them, and had to invent new laws. So theyre getting scared to fight MOB. When they have a problem, like with farming, they dont ask the farmers how to solve it. They ask MOB because the farmers do not get high-priced lawyers to fight the law. MOB has a key position because the government is not smart enough.

The question: how much longer can such an assault go on? If people are fed you can keep them happy so long as you have a good story, says Jos. But if they are getting hungry then the government will lose everything. In the first week, people cant buy anything; by the 2^nd week they start complaining. By the third week they go to the Hague and rip the people out of office. Decades ago we decided as a nation that we want to have good agriculture. Now we have perfect agriculture and they want to shut it down. I think the roads will burn again.

Despite exceeding previously-set climate goals, the state is imposing even more stringent restrictions on Dutch farmers.

As even OECD admits, Environmental agreements, which are more or less binding substitutes for regulation, have been successful in a number of areas in the Netherlands; the European Commission concurring, Monitoring data show a downward trend in nitrate concentration in groundwater. Nevertheless, Implementation of environmental agreements should be accompanied more systematically by transparency mechanisms and the threat of penalties for farmers. (And its list of demands runs on for hundreds of pages, extending far beyond the scope of nature).

The farmer shall accept that the fertilizer application and account can be subject to control. Periodic nitrogen and phosphorus analysis in soil shall be performed for each farm. A fertilization account shall be kept for each farmland. It shall be submitted to the competent authority for each calendar year

It seems that nothing Dutch farmers can do will be adequate. We have a million less cows than in 1991 when [the global environmental treaty] Natura 2000 came, because of protected areas [where agriculture is forbidden or restricted], Sieta says. We already reduced 70 percent of emissions, a marked improvement confirmed by OECD as being insufficient. But a lot of politicians want an end to dairy. They say ammonia from animals is the worst thing that can happen.

So whats to replace food-production? One more stated plan, far-fetched as it might seem in the midst of Europes energy crisis, is to build a new kind of metropolis, a megacity encompassing parts of Holland, Germany and Belgium, called the Tristate-City.

The Tristate-City website brands the project as Europes new super-cityan organically green network metropol where urban and rural space remain in balance. Details are sparse, but the planners wholeheartedly promise: This model has no relation whatsoever with the nitrogen policy of the Dutch government!

Inside King Charles III’s $25 Billion Real Estate Empire

https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/10/21/inside-king-charles-iiis-25-billion-real-estate-empire/

Giacomo Tognini Forbes Staff Staff Writer, Wealth Team. Oct 21, 2022,

The new British monarch lords over seven palaces, 10 castles, 12 homes, 56 cottages, and 14 ancient ruins where he can hang up his crown

Charles III’s official coronation may not occur until May 6, but the new British monarch has already inherited a $25 billion real estate portfolio fit for a king.

When he acceded the throne in September, the 73-year-old sovereign assumed control of a $42 billion empire, much of it in real estate. Forbes scoured property records, annual reports, audits, archives and legislative documents to find all of the king’s new possessions. His holdings span from Buckingham Palace­the official headquarters of the monarchy, which Forbes estimates is worth $4.9 billion­to Highgrove House, a country residence in Gloucestershire that Charles first purchased in 1980 for £865,000 ($3.7 million today,) now valued at $39 million.

Although he has only had the crown for a few weeks, Charles is expected to break with seven generations of tradition and reject Buckingham Palace as his London residence to remain in his current home at Clarence House (estimated value: $72 million.) But he will also reportedly continue to spend some time at Highgrove. That means he’ll have to pay about $740,000 in annual rent to his son William, who succeeded him as Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall and now holds Highgrove under the Duchy of Cornwall.

KING OF THESE CASTLES

Charles III’s $25 billion real estate empire is spread across the United Kingdom as well as two cottages in Transylvania. Here are all the properties where he can stow thrones.

Those properties are part of a vast collection of at least seven palaces, 10 castles, 12 homes, 56 holiday cottages and 14 ancient ruins, per Forbes’ count. Aside from Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Sandringham House in Norfolk, which he inherited from the Queen and now personally owns, none of these opulent residences and historic monuments are directly owned by the King. Most are held by the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, institutions held “in right of the Crown” for the duration of his reign. Others are controlled by the monarchy itself “in trust” for his successors and the nation, while another four properties are held by two foundations which the King established when he was Prince of Wales.

And it’s not just palaces and countryside homes: through the Crown Estate and the Duchies, Charles now also oversees $12.9 billion in commercial, residential and agricultural properties throughout the U.K., ranging from Ascot Racecourse and the Oval cricket ground to at least three golf courses, a private airfield and the Savoy Chapel in Westminster, the private church of the reigning monarch. The Crown also holds one of England’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge, which was given “to the nation” in 1918 by Cecil Chubb, a local resident who purchased it for £6,600 in 1915 (about $590,000 today).

As the head of state in 15 Commonwealth realms­ in addition to 13 British territories and three crown dependencies­ Charles also has access to at least 49 residences for state visits across the globe, at the homes of his representatives in each nation. Whether he’s traveling to Canada (Rideau Hall in Ottawa,) the Caribbean (King’s House in Jamaica) or the Pacific (Admiralty House in Sydney,) the new monarch always has a place to rest the head that wears the crown.

Closer to home, the lavish estates, extravagant mansions and crumbling ruins maintained by the British monarchy, royal foundations or by the King personally are spread throughout three of the four nations of the United Kingdom, plus two cottages in Transylvania. And there used to be more: between 1998 and 1999, the Crown Estate ceded ownership of six castles, two palaces and one fort in Scotland ­including the millennium-old Edinburgh Castle­to the Scottish government.

But only a small number of homes­ fourteen­ serve as official residences of the King and the royal family. Two more royal residences are personally owned by other family members­ Charles’s sister, Princess Anne, owns Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire (estimated value: $29 million), while the Duke of Gloucester, his first cousin once removed, has put his Barnwell Manor in Northamptonshire up for sale for $5.4 million. Another of Charles’ new digs, the royal palace in Northern Ireland at Hillsborough Castle, is owned directly by the British government, which purchased it in 1925 for £24,000 (or $1.3 million today.)

Average citizens can also get in on a piece of the royal lifestyle: the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster operate 56 holiday homes and cottages across England, Wales and the Isles of Scilly that can be rented out, while the Prince of Wales’ Charitable Fund operates two bed-and-breakfasts in Romania. Everything else, including medieval masterpieces such as the Tower of London and Caernarfon Castle, is a tourist attraction managed by various charities and trusts.

Forbes valued these properties with the help of estimates provided by Lenka Dušková Munter, a sales specialist for historical properties at Czech real estate agency Luxent, and Colby Short, co-founder and CEO of estate agent website GetAgent.co.uk. Here’s a breakdown of King Charles III’s real estate empire.

ENGLAND

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

Est. Value: $4.9 BILLION
The official residence of the royal family since 1837, the 775-room palace with a private swimming pool is also King Charles’s birthplace. First purchased by George III in 1761 when it was still a house, construction to convert it into a palace began in 1820 and only completed in 1847 with the addition of a new wing for Queen Victoria’s growing family, financed largely by the sale of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton for £53,000 ($5.4 million today.) Despite an extensive renovation which began in 2017 and will cost more than $400 million, Charles is known to dislike the “big house.”

HAMPTON COURT PALACE

Est. Value: $1.2 B
Known as the Tudor Palace, Hampton Court is where King Henry VIII spent most of his time, with all six of his wives: by the 1530s, he had added a hotel, theater and numerous works of art; visitors can now see Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar plus works by Caravaggio and Rembrandt. The palace also features a grand colonnade, Fountain Court­designed by Sir Christopher Wren­which had a cameo in the second season of Netflix’s Bridgerton.

TOWER OF LONDON
Est. Value: $1.1 B
Built by William the Conqueror in the late 11th century, the towering castle at the heart of London is home to the Crown Jewels, worth an estimated $4 billion. Three Queens of England­Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Jane Grey­were executed here in the 1500s.

WINDSOR CASTLE
Est. Value: $743 MILLION
Windsor Castle was completed in 1086, one year before William the Conqueror’s death. In 1377, King Edward III spent £50,000 (some $57 million today) to convert it from a military fort into a gothic palace­the largest expense of any medieval king on a single building. Over its nearly thousand-year history, the castle been home to 40 monarchs and is still a favorite of the royal family. The surrounding estate includes Windsor Great Park, golf courses and Ascot Racecourse.

ST. JAMES’S PALACE
Est. Value: $700 M
Overlooking Green Park and St. James’s Park in London­two of the eight royal parks in the capital held by the Crown­St. James’s Palace was once the home of Elizabeth I during the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1558. More recently, it was also the location of King Charles’s accession ceremony on September 10.

LANCASTER CASTLE
Est. value: $674 M
Over its thousand-plus-year history, Lancaster Castle has served as a Roman fort, the site of witch trials and as a prison­until it was decommissioned and converted into a tourist attraction in 2011.

KENSINGTON PALACE
Est. Value: $630 M
The childhood home of Prince William and Prince Harry, Kensington was known as the “party palace” in the late 17th century for hosting extravagant balls where guests “ate, drank, gambled and flirted until dawn.” The palace is still William and Kate’s official London residence, while Prince Harry and Meghan Markle live in a $23 million mansion in Montecito, California, replete with 9 bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, a private pool, spa, theater and tennis court.

BANQUETING HOUSE
Est. Value: $296 M
The only remnant of the Palace of Whitehall­once the largest palace in Europe until its destruction in a fire in 1698­Banqueting House in London is home to a 2,420-square-foot ceiling painting by Peter Paul Rubens commissioned by Charles I in 1629. (Rubens was paid £3,000 for the work­some $540,000 today­plus a heavy gold chain.) It’s also where Charles I met a gruesome end on January 30, 1649: just two decades after commissioning the Rubens ceiling, he walked under it and was then executed outside Banqueting House.

CARISBROOKE CASTLE
Est. value: $225 M
Located on the Isle of Wight, Carisbrooke Castle carries much darker memories for the royals: After its capture by parliamentary forces in 1642 during the English Civil War, the dethroned King Charles I was imprisoned there in the years leading up to his execution.

ELTHAM PALACE
Est. Value: $211 M
Described as “unique marriage between a medieval and Tudor palace and a 1930s millionaire’s mansion,” Eltham Palace was used as a royal palace by monarchs who hunted in the surrounding parks from the 14th to the 16th century. Henry VIII, the last king to reside there, spent his childhood at Eltham. In 1933, millionaires Stephen and Virginia Courtauld took a 99-year-lease on the palace from the Crown and installed a bomb shelter in the basement during World War II; they eventually moved out in 1944 after growing tired of the repeated air raids from the German Luftwaffe.

THATCHED HOUSE LODGE
Est. Value: $131 M
Thatched House Lodge is a Regency-era home built in the early 18th century on a 4-acre estate in Richmond Park, the largest park in London and another royal possession. The property is home to Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin Princess Alexandra, who has rented it from the Crown Estate since 1963 and paid a £670,000 premium ($1.4 million today) to extend the lease in 1994.

RESTORMEL MANOR
(14 Properties) Est. Value: $86 M
The Duchy of Cornwall’s 14 holiday properties near the medieval town of Lostwithiel in Cornwall are housed in and around Restormel Manor, a 500-year-old Gothic-style mansion with a steam room, sauna, tennis court and an indoor heated swimming pool. But living like an English lord is pricey: one week at the nine-bedroom Restormel Manor property in December will cost $4,000.

SANDRINGHAM ESTATE
Est. Value: $73 M
One of two properties personally owned by King Charles, which he inherited from his late mother, Sandringham in Norfolk has been in the royal family since 1862. The estate includes the Royal Studs, a thoroughbred horse farm first established in 1886, as well as rental properties spread across 13 nearby villages­with a notorious “no cats” policy for would-be renters, reportedly due to the Queen’s fears the felines would kill the pheasants and partridges kept as game birds. Charles is also reportedly looking to sell some of the Queen’s prized race horses and scale down the Royal Studs.

CLARENCE HOUSE
Est. Value: $72 M
King Charles’s longtime home is one of the last surviving aristocratic townhouses in London, a stuccoed mansion completed in 1827 at the cost of £22,232 ($2 million today)­more than double the original estimate. The Queen also lived there while she was still a princess, and it served as the home of her mother’s impressive art collection, featuring works by Fabergé and John Piper.

KEW PALACE
Est. Value: $70 M
Set among the Royal Botanic Gardens­home to more than 50,000 plants including rare and threatened species housed in a grand Victorian-era greenhouse­Kew Palace was the private retreat of King George III during a long period of mental illness, starting in 1788. The gardens are also home to the Chinese-style Great Pagoda, a 163-foot-tall tower with 80 dragons carved from gilded wood. The dragons, removed in 1784 and restored in 2018, were rumored to have been sold to pay off King George IV’s gambling debts.

DOVER CASTLE
Est. Value: $66 M
Standing guard over the Strait of Dover, the shortest sea crossing between England and Europe, Dover Castle originated as a Roman fort in 43 CE. Another castle on the site was erected in 1066 by William the Conqueror, who captured the city after the Battle of Hastings. The structure that stands today was established by Henry II in 1189. And while British royals haven’t used the castle since 1625, it’s been used in warfare throughout the centuries, including as a garrison for 16,000 troops during the First World War, a hospital in World War II and as a backup seat of government in case of a nuclear attack during the Cold War.

CARLISLE CASTLE
Est. value: $45 M
Located about ten miles south of the modern English-Scottish border, Carlisle Castle served as the Kingdom of England’s fortress against the Scots for half a century until the two realms were united in 1603. Built on the ruins of a Roman fort that provided support for garrisons on Hadrian’s Wall, the castle was besieged seven times by the Scots between 1173 and 1461, when it was again besieged during the English Wars of the Roses. It served as a base for Edward I in 1296; the prison of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567; and as a British army barracks from the 1820s until 1959.

BAGSHOT PARK
Est. Value: $39 M
Built in 1879 on the orders of Queen Victoria as a home for her third son, Prince Arthur, Bagshot Park in Surrey is a Tudor Gothic-style mansion set on 52 acres of gardens, including stables and a working farm. Prince Edward, Charles’s youngest brother, has lived there since 1998, paying roughly $100,000 in annual rent to the Crown Estate. Charles’ other brother, Prince Andrew, lives a 20-minute drive away at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, which he rented with a 75-year-lease in 2003 for a one-time payment of £1 million (or $1.8 million now).

HIGHGROVE HOUSE
Est. Value: $39 M
King Charles’ longtime family home, Highgrove was built in 1798 and acquired by the then-Prince of Wales in 1980. The estate is home to 15 acres of organic gardens with heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables and an adjacent shop where visitors can buy eggs, wine and spirits made on the property. It’s also a short drive from Ray Mill House, the private home of Charles’ wife, Camilla, the Queen Consort. She purchased the six-bedroom countryside cottage for £850,000 ($1.7 million today) in January 1996, a year after her divorce from her first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles­and just seven months before Charles’s own divorce with Princess Diana in August that year. Diana died a year later, in August 1997.

FROGMORE HOUSE
Est. Value: $35 M
Named for the numerous amphibians that live in the marshes around the property, Frogmore House was purchased by King George III in 1792 as a country retreat for his wife, Queen Charlotte. The mansion’s Britannia Room features paintings, porcelain and furniture taken from the interior of the royal yacht, HMY Britannia, after it was decommissioned in 1997. The Frogmore estate is also home to the mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and Frogmore Cottage, the U.K. residence of Prince Harry and Meghan. In September 2020, the couple repaid $3.2 million in refurbishing expenses, originally covered by British taxpayers.

CHESTER CASTLE
Est. Value: $22 M
One of the many castles built by William the Conqueror in 1070, Chester Castle served as the military headquarters for Henry III’s and Edward I’s conquest of Wales, and as a Royalist headquarters during the English Civil War. The castle, which was used by the British military until 1999, features a chapel with wall paintings dating to 1240.

OSBORNE HOUSE
Est. Value: $19 M
This Italianate mansion was purchased by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845 for £28,000 ($3 million today) as a seaside retreat on the Isle of Wight. The eclectic mansion was designed with architectural features drawn from around the world: the Italian palazzo-style home with extensive terraces; the Indian-style Durbar Wing, in honor of Victoria’s status as Empress of India; and the Swiss Cottage, an “educational tool” for the royal children, where they grew fruit, flowers and vegetables.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER COTTAGES
(16 Properties) Est. Value: $12 M
The Duchy of Lancaster owns fifteen holiday cottages in Scarborough, a seaside resort located near North York Moors national park. A one-night stay at the 8-bedroom Scalby Lodge in late November will set you back some $720. Root Farm Cottage is a two-bedroom property in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, forming part of the Whitewell Estate, last visited by the Queen Elizabeth in 2006 for her 80th birthday celebrations.

LOSKEYLE COTTAGES
(2 Properties) Est. Value: $4.1 M
The Duchy of Cornwall owns four holiday cottages­with complimentary fishing for guests­in St Tudy, a small countryside village in Cornwall. A seven-night stay in November in Menhenick, a two-story, three-bedroom barn, costs $735.

DOLPHIN HOUSE
Est. Value: $2 M
The six-bedroom home on the island of Tresco is housed in an old granite rectory, with hilltop views of the Atlantic Ocean and the 19th-century Round Island lighthouse.

TAMARISK
Est. Value: $1.5 M
Tamarisk is a four-bedroom cottage on Garrison Hill in Hugh Town on the island of St. Mary’s. Its name comes from the tamarisk trees on the property, a flowering plant mentioned in the Old Testament and the Iliad. While still an official royal residence, Charles and Diana snubbed the home on their vacations to the Isles of Scilly, preferring to stay with friends in Tresco.

BERKHAMSTED CASTLE
Before it crumbled into ruins, Berkhamsted Castle was a motte-and-bailey built out of timber in 1070. It was briefly the home of Thomas Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who rebuilt the castle in stone between 1155 and 1164. From 1225 to 1272, it was refurbished and expanded to serve as the palace of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, believed to be the richest man in England at the time.

BOLINGBROKE CASTLE
King Henry IV was born in the 13th-century Bolingbroke Castle in 1367, but all that remains are the sunken hexagonal walls and surrounding earthworks.

CROMWELL’S CASTLE
One of the few remaining fortifications from the Interregnum­the period between 1649 and 1660 when Oliver Cromwell ruled England after executing Charles I­Cromwell’s Castle is a circular gun tower built in 1651, after Cromwell’s forces recaptured the Isles of Scilly from the royalists.

KING CHARLES’S CASTLE
Adjacent to Cromwell’s castle on the island of Tresco, King Charles’s Castle was built during the reign of King Edward VI and renamed by pro-Charles I royalists during the English Civil War. The gambit didn’t work­parliamentarian troops bypassed the now-ruined castle by landing on the other side of Tresco in 1651.

LAUNCESTON CASTLE
Launceston Castle is a ruined 13th-century round tower and the remnants of a castle originally built by William the Conqueror for his half-brother. It later served as a prison where George Fox, founder of the Quakers, was detained in 1656 and held executions until 1821.

LYDFORD CASTLE
Lydford Castle sits on the western edge of Dartmoor national park, a vast expanse of moorlands where the Duchy of Cornwall owns a third of the land. The 12th-century square castle was a prison from the Middle Ages until the 1700s.

MAIDEN CASTLE
Described as “one of the largest and most complex Iron Age hillforts in Europe,” Maiden Castle is the size of 50 soccer pitches, with enormous ramparts dating to the 1st century BCE.

PEVERIL CASTLE
Now in ruins, Peveril Castle, was one of the earliest Norman fortresses in England, with a keep built by Henry II in 1176.

RESTORMEL CASTLE
Once a “luxurious retreat” in the 14th century and the home of Edward, the first Duke of Cornwall, Restormel Castle is now a ruin with a large circular keep.

ST. MARY’S COTTAGES
(3 properties)
Besides Tamarisk, the Duchy of Cornwall also owns three more holiday homes on St. Mary’s, including a two-bedroom property in a 17th-century guard house and another housed in a former gun battery.

TICKHILL CASTLE
Now occupied by a private tenant who rents the land from the Duchy of Lancaster, the 11th-century Tickhill Castle was expanded by several English kings until its decline during the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century: King Henry I built a gatehouse and a wall with ramparts in 1130, and Henry II added a new keep and a stone bridge in 1182.

TINTAGEL CASTLE
Located on the rugged northern coast of Cornwall, little remains of this 13th-century castle.

TRESCO COTTAGES
(15 properties)
The Duchy of Cornwall­which owns nearly all of the land on the Isles of Scilly­has 15 holiday cottages on the island of Tresco, in addition to Dolphin House.

TREMATON CASTLE
The ruins of Trematon Castle in eastern Cornwall were converted into a private garden with evergreen oaks and wild flowers in 2012, when it was leased by garden designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman from the Duchy of Cornwall.

TUTBURY CASTLE
Built in 1071 for Norman baron Henry de Ferrers, this now-ruined castle was confiscated by Henry III during the Second Barons’ War in 1267. Elizabeth I imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots at Tutbury multiple times between 1569 and 1585, when she was moved 80 miles south to Fotheringhay Castle and executed.

WALES

CAERNARFON CASTLE
Est. Value: $289 M
Inspired by imperial Roman architecture and the walls of ancient Constantinople, the 13th-century Caernarfon Castle is ringed by 2,400 feet of stone walls studded with 12 octagonal towers and surrounded by a moat. King Edward I ordered its construction in 1283 after the conquest of Wales, but the colossal structure took 47 years and £25,000 (more than $23 million today) to complete­roughly 90% of England’s annual income at the time. It also holds a special resonance to the new king: Charles was invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon in 1969.

LLWYNYWERMOD
Est. Value: $3.9 M
Located near the mountains of Brecon Beacons national park, Llwynywermod was King Charles III’s Welsh retreat while he was Prince of Wales. The 192-acre estate is now in the hands of his son, Prince William, who has his own Welsh connection: The wedding ring he gave Kate Middleton in 2011 is made of Welsh gold, and the couple lived on the isle of Anglesey off the northwest coast of Wales while William worked as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot.

MYDDFAI COTTAGES
(2 properties)
The Duchy of Cornwall owns two cottages on the Llwynywermod estate, housed in converted barns. Guests can expect to pay $1,000 for a weeklong stay at the smaller two-bedroom West Range cottage for the privilege of being William and Kate’s neighbor.

OGMORE CASTLE
The oval-shaped ruins of Ogmore Castle feature a twelfth-century stone keep and date to 1116, when the castle was founded by the Norman de Londres family.

ROMANIA

THE PRINCE OF WALES’S GUESTHOUSE
Est. value: $1.1 M
One of only two properties held by King Charles outside of the U.K., he purchased this private nature retreat and guesthouse in the rural Transylvanian village of Valea Z lanului­known locally by its Hungarian moniker Zalánpatak­through Ecologic Transilvania SRL, a Romanian subsidiary of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund. Visitors can go horse riding at the property’s stables or take advantage of a wood-fired “salty hot-tub” and a mineral water pool in the summer, or horse-drawn sleigh rides with mulled wine in the winter.

THE PRINCE OF WALES’S HOUSE
Est. value: $1.1 M
Located a two-hour drive west of Valea Z lanului in the town of Viscri, Charles’s second Romanian property is a bed and breakfast that doubles as a traditional crafts and training center housed in an 18th-century Saxon home. Beyond these two homes, Charles has another, centuries-old link to Transylvania: he is a distant relative of Vlad the Impaler, who ruled what is now Romania in the 15th century and served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

SCOTLAND

BALMORAL CASTLE
Est. Value: $118 M
Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite residence, she spent her final days at Balmoral before she died on September 8 at age 96. Purchased by Prince Albert for his wife, Queen Victoria, in 1852 for £32,000 ($3.9 million today,) the castle was built in the Scottish Baronial style out of local white granite. The 50,000-acre estate includes a golf course, woodlands, a bridge across the river Dee designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and an obelisk commemorating Prince Albert. Along with Sandringham, it’s one of two properties personally owned by King Charles, which he inherited from the Queen.

PALACE OF HOLYROOD HOUSE
Est. Value: $83 M
The official residence of the monarchy in Scotland, Holyroodhouse sits on one end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, which connects the palace to Edinburgh Castle. Founded by King David I of Scotland as an Augustinian monastery in 1128­a structure that’s still intact today as Holyrood Abbey­James IV built a palace on the grounds in 1501, and later residents included Mary, Queen of Scots. (A box containing her hair is on display in her former chambers.) The palace rooms feature treasures from the Royal Collection, including the Darnley Jewel, a heart-shaped gold locket studded with Burmese rubies and Indian emerald.

DUMFRIES HOUSE
Est. Value: $46 M
Set on 2,000 acres of land in rural Ayrshire in southwestern Scotland, Dumfries House is a Palladian, 18th-century mansion purchased by Charles in 2007 for £45 million (or $77 million today) through a trust. Built in 1759 by William Chrichton-Dalrymple, the Earl of Dumfries, and designed by the architect Robert Adam and his two brothers, the home is known for retaining its original 18th-century furniture from the workshop of Thomas Chippendale. Now in the hands of the Prince’s Foundation, a charity Charles set up in 1986, Dumfries House is open to visitors and is also used for training young people in traditional skills and crafts.

CASTLE OF MEY
Est. Value: $15 M
Built in 1567 by George, the Earl of Caithness on the northeastern coast of Scotland, the Castle of Mey features a grand entrance and dining room designed by William Burn in 1819. It fell into disrepair in the 20th century until it was purchased by the Queen Elizabeth’s mother in 1952, who renovated the castle and its 30 acres of gardens and parklands and restored the property’s original name. The Queen Mother handed the castle over to a trust in 1996, which now forms part of The Prince’s Foundation.

Military homes row heads to court

Guy Hands files legal claim against MoD to block renationalisation of £7.6bn housing portfolio

By Helen Cahill – Daily Telegraph – Tuesday 15 March 2022

GUY HANDS’ housing firm has launched legal proceedings against the Government to block the renationalisation of its portfolio of thousands of military homes.

Hands’ company Annington Homes has begun legal action in two courts after talks with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over the renationalisation broke down. Annington offered to contribute £105m to maintain the homes but was rebuffed by the MoD.

Anningtorn has now launched a judicial review as well as a High Court claim challenging the ‘MoD’s plans. Defence chiefs are trying to use leasehold rights to reclaim homes that were first sold off by John Major’s administration in 1996.

Hands brokered the privatisation deal while he was head of the Principal Financial Group at Nomura. He later purchased the properties through his private equity firm Terra Firma. The portfolio is now valued at £7.6bn.

The MoD sold off 57,400 homes for £1.7bn and then rented them back on a 200-year lease.

The Government has since been criticised for failing to properly value the homes in the original auction. The National Audit Office has complained officials were too cautious with their assumptions for house prices, and missed out on vast capital growth in the portfolio. Its report found taxpayers have lost as much as £4.2bn.

The Government is also on the hook for hundreds of millions each year in rent and maintenance payments on the properties. Lord Admiral West, the former first sea lord, has described the deal as a “dream money-making scheme for the private sector”.

Annington said the Government could still avert a lengthy legal dispute if it takes up the company’s offer to contribute £105m towards maintenance. The company has warned legal proceedings could take up to five years.

A spokesman for Annington Homes said: “We can confirm that Annington has begun legal proceedings against the UK Government.

”We continue to be open to discuss with the Government to find a solution that avoids a long and expensive legal dispute.”

Hands was hoping to sell the portfolio in a private auction before hearing of the MOD’s attempt to reclaim the properties. Reports suggested he could have made more than £1.5bn from the sale.

The MoD has so far trialled its scheme on two individual properties. The so-called ‘enfranchisement’ scheme would allow the government to purchase freeholds en masse at a price agreed by a court.

Annington has argued that the scheme is not appropriate for use on a large number of homes and that making thousands of applications will block up the court system. But the MoD is confident it would be able to use test cases to establish valuations for a wider group of properties.

Mr Hands has embarked upon lengthy legal battles in the past. His ill-fated takeover of music group EMI sparked a legal dispute with Citigroup that lasted seven years. Citi lent Terra Firma £2.5bn to fund the deal.

Mr Hands later chased the bank through the courts, both in New York and London over allegations of fraud but he abandoned the £1.5bn case in 2016.

The MoD declined to comment.

National Trust rewilding projects leave tenants feeling pushed out

https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/business-management/tenancies-rents/national-trust-rewilding-projects-leaves-tenants-feel-pushed-out

Several farming tenants and the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) are concerned by what they see as the over-zealous way in which the National Trust is taking productive agricultural land back in-hand for rewilding.

Farmers Weekly talks to some tenants who have lost the land they have farmed for years.

See also: Why farm tenants are criticising National Trust landlords

Devon farmer leaves after 28 years

Patrick Greed, who farms on the Killerton Estate in Devon, feels he has betrayed agriculture after accepting an incentive from the National Trust to give up his Agricultural Holdings Act (AHA) tenancy after 28 years.

As well as the main 160ha holding he farmed, he had another 60ha of river meadow grazing on a Farm Business Tenancy (FBT).

The National Trust kept renewing it every five or 10 years, depending upon what environmental stewardship schemes we were in, he says.

Most recently, we had been in Higher Level Stewardship and once that ended, they decided to take it back for tree planting, scrapes and rewilding.

Loss of this land meant 61-year-old Mr Greed had to reduce his Limousin suckler herd. We had 550 head (cows and followers) before we lost the river meadows. Now we have 340.

Mr Greeds pedigree limousin Patrick Greed

With it becoming increasingly difficult to farm the land productively, alongside TB risks and greater public use of the land, Mr Greed accepted the incentive to quit and will leave the farm next year.

But he is uneasy about the direction the National Trust is taking.

It is not reletting it as a farm. It plans to do a lot of tree planting on the main holding. But just over 120ha of it is Grade 1 and 2 arable land.

It [the National Trust] even wants to plant trees on some of the permanent pasture. It is wrong. Farmers ought to be producing as much food as possible from this land.

Mr Greed is not alone. Land agent Kevin Bateman, director of Bateman Hosegood, has come across numerous cases, particularly in the past two years, where the National Trust has taken back tenanted land for rewilding and tree planting.

It feels like re-enactment of the Highland clearances a land grab, he says.

Typically, tenants are finding that their FBTs, which have been historically renewed, are being taken back in-hand, which is significantly affecting the viability of some businesses.

And some tenants with AHA tenancies are being offered cash incentives to give them up too, says Mr Bateman.

The policy feels like it is financially driven, with the trust targeting big grants for landscape-scale nature recovery at the expense of its tenanted farms.

It sees this as a way of creating significant income for itself. However, it does not understand the implications for the farming businesses and family homes that it is effectively destroying, he explains.

The way it is doing this suggests that it has complete contempt for the farmers who have farmed the land for generations.

Cornwall farmer feels destroyed

When Tom Hasson, 42, and his partner Becki Prouse, 37, took on the 220ha mixed farm FBT in Stowe Barton, Cornwall seven years ago having farmed 60-80ha of it for 14 years they fully expected to continue.

Tom Hasson and family Tom Hasson

When we took it on, the National Trust said it wanted to let it to a young farming family like us. In June last year, we went with a proposal to renew our Mid-Tier stewardship and tenancy, says Mr Hasson.

So it came as a bombshell when the trust said it had different plans for the premises. It wanted to take all the land back and create a nature reserve with agricultural production as a by-product rather than the main aim.

At their last meeting, the National Trust suggested running 50 head of cattle over 220ha on a year-to-year grazing licence.

But there would be no security and how could we get an income when they would be taking the payments? Our plans are up in the air, says Mr Hasson.

It has totally destroyed us and upset the kids. Ms Prouse agrees: There is no recognition of what we have done. I feel empty.

Devon farm goes to public access

Echoing this sentiment is Tim Jankins, who came out of his 180ha mixed farm FBT on the South Devon Estate, near Plymouth, in November last year.

Tim Jakins Moostones

We were there for 25 years. The National Trust approached us in 2018 when our tenancy was up for renewal and said we couldnt renew it on the previous terms, he says.

It wanted a large amount of public access, and to rewild some of it.

My gut reaction told me to get out. Id put a lifetimes savings into it and I didnt want to be there when it reverted back to whatever it was supposed to be reverting back to.

He has since heard that the farmhouse is empty and that there are many weeds on the farm. It is good, productive land, he adds.

We used to supply a good amount of beef and lamb, with grain going to local feed mills. This now has to be brought in from further away, which doesnt help the carbon footprint.

TFA: Wrong-headed policy

Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) chief executive George Dunn says that what is happening to some tenants is devastating.

They have put their heart and soul into a place, hoping to get some sort of tenancy renewal and are told this is not going to happen.

People are bringing up families on these farms, they are involved in local communities and go to local schools.

While he is aware of conversations on other National Trust estates, Mr Dunn says the situation is most potent in the South West, particularly affecting coastal properties.

The Trust is focusing attention on what it considers is needed for biodiversity net gain and carbon reduction. It doesnt see these farms as particularly important from an agricultural perspective.

The TFA thinks the policy is entirely wrong-headed. It is a vanity project driven by the current media frenzy around rewilding, which in our view is not based on sound science, says Mr Dunn.

The TFA is also challenging Defra over spending public money on such projects.

The governments objective is to maintain the landlord/tenant system in agriculture.

If a landlord like the National Trust decides to bring someones occupation of a farm to an end, it shouldnt have access to public funding for planting trees and rewilding, Mr Dunn suggests.

He advises tenants who have been approached about giving up their tenancy not to go quietly and to speak up for what they believe to be right.

Contact the TFA, he adds. We are building a database to help lobby the National Trust on a joint basis the more cases we have, the better.

National Trust insists it values its tenants

The National Trust says it wants to make its land better for nature, to help tackle the nature and climate crisis.

We want to create and restore 25,000ha for nature on our land by 2025 work started in 2017. This means we may retain land in-hand, often temporarily, to reset the management model, says a spokesman.

Any payments made as incentives to surrender tenancies are from National Trust funds, and each case is considered in its local context.

The trust denies taking land back so it can claim future Landscape Recovery or other environmental grants.

If we hold land in-hand, it is with a view to taking some time to plan its future use and management, the spokesman explains.

When we decide to make changes to our land, we look at the different options available to support any capital investments needed and to secure appropriate long-term management.

We anticipate future funding will come from a variety of sources and that rental income will continue to be part of that mix.

The National Trust says it is acutely aware of the impact on tenants when tenancies are not renewed. We work hard to support our tenants with the challenges they face as a result of this, it insists.

How a great English city sold itself to Abu Dhabi’s elite – and not even for a good price

Manchester’s Labour council let Sheikh Mansour buy up acres of public land for seemingly a fraction of its worth – how was this allowed?

Aditya Chakrabortty – The Guardian – Thu 21 Jul 2022

London is one giant pantomime this summer. Just look to the politicians and journalists, hot-breathed with excitement, horse-trading and haggling over who gets to be the Tories’ next head prefect. But if you want the truth about how power and money operate in the UK today then ditch Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, and head to Manchester. Yes, Manchester: the comeback city that traded cotton mills for skyscrapers, and is now cheered by the Financial Times and George Osborne. The metropolis that taught the world so much about industrial capitalism 200 years ago now offers another harsh lesson about its 21st-century, financialised version.

Go a few minutes east of the city centre, and walk from New Islington into Ancoats. Block follows block of newly built and freshly converted flats and houses, many lining a lovely marina that glistens in the July sun. You can rent or buy these places right now, as long as you don’t mind how much some look like pile-em-high student boxes and that they all cost a packet. This is what post-industrial regeneration looks like, right? Redbrick in tooth and claw. But note something: almost 1,500 of these homes come from just one developer, and in that lies an entire sobering story.

Launched in 2014, Manchester Life was hailed as a “£1bn deal” between the city council and the Abu Dhabi-based owner of Manchester City football club. The local authority had swaths of brownfield and Sheikh Mansour, the club’s owner, ranked among the richest men on the planet. Working together, the result would be homes for people who desperately needed them and pots of cash. The council’s then leader, Richard Leese, promised “a world-class exemplar of regeneration”.

Meanwhile, human rights groups warned Manchester council about its powerful new business partner. The Abu Dhabi United Group investment fund is formally separate from the kingdom, but its owner, Sheikh Mansour, is the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruling crown prince. In April, journalists at Der Spiegel magazine published documents suggesting that the state of Abu Dhabi had facilitated payments to Manchester City. At the very least, the investment fund is closely linked to what Amnesty International has described as “one of the most brutal police states in the Middle East”. To dissent in the UAE is to rot in jail, in a regime with proportionately more political prisoners than anywhere else in the world. Low-paid migrant nannies or builders are, Human Rights Watch says, “forced labour”. Yet such facts did not deter the council’s Labour leadership from going ahead.

It was a huge advance for Sheikh Mansour who had, only half a decade earlier in 2008, bought a struggling football club. Now his investment fund was entering a joint venture with the British state (albeit at local level), getting its hands on prime real estate and shaping the city’s very geography. Those of Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs who trousered chunks of London could never dream of such a glittering prize.

As one of the rulers of an autocratic kingdom that has an appalling reputation for repression and an addiction to oil revenues, Sheikh Mansour stood to gain so much from this partnership. It was the council that held almost all the cards: the hectares of publicly owned land, the planning regime, the public subsidies. Yet somehow, according to new research shared exclusively today with the Guardian and authored by academics at Sheffield University, it was Sheikh Mansour who pocketed almost all the winnings. The report says that nine sites were sold to the sheikh at a fraction of their value, and well below what other plots nearby fetched (the council says it used independent experts using standard valuations, although it won’t give any more details). They were on leases lasting 999 years, well beyond the norm. And the fund shifted what had been public assets to companies registered in Jersey.

That walk along the water from New Islington into Ancoats now passes blocks of privatised land owned in an offshore tax haven, which yields millions upon millions for a key member of the wealthy elite running a surveillance state halfway across the globe. One of the greatest cities in the world has sold itself to a senior figure in a brutal autocracy – and not even for a good price.

This is the devastating implication in the first thorough study of the Manchester Life scheme, which is a product of months poring over company accounts and planning applications. The city council is sometimes keener to criticise its critics than to hear what they have to say: Leese, its leader for 25 years until 2021, once responded to those calling for more affordable housing as “middle class tosspots and I hate them”. So let us knock on the head any personal attacks: the experts have all lived in the city for decades, I am one of the independent and unpaid advisers on the advisory panel, and this is a report issued squarely in the public interest.

Among a political establishment still scratching its head over how to level up, Manchester is celebrated as a pioneer. Its Labour leadership has been praised by Conservative administrations, while Osborne called its chief executive, Sir Howard Bernstein, “the star of British local government”.

Bernstein ran the council for nearly two decades until 2017, and sat on the board of Manchester Life. Yet its success has come at a high price for the little people who just happen to live in the city. Not only have the assets they owned been sold cheap, they have got little back. The nine developed sites have no social or affordable housing, which the council’s planning officers justified with statements such as: “There is already a high level of affordable housing in the immediate area.” The same council admitted earlier this year that nearly 4,000 of the city’s children sleep each night in temporary accommodation.

At the Manchester Life developments, a two-bed flat is considered a bargain if it goes for £369,000 – a price that puts it off limits to couples working full-time on an average salary. As for tax, the sums paid to the Exchequer seem risible. One of its main subsidiaries earned more than £26m in the five years to 2021, but, the researchers found, paid less than £10,000 in tax – an effective rate of just 4p on each £100 of revenue. Manchester Life told me that its subsidiaries “pay all UK corporation or income tax due on rental income and profits”. It would not, however, disclose how much tax it pays or on how much revenue.

It is right to say that New Islington and Ancoats are vastly more pleasant areas than they were even five years ago – but the big question is who has won from redevelopment and who has lost. Putting hard numbers on that is tricky when so much of the information about Manchester Life – a venture using public assets and public subsidy with a public authority – is kept strictly private.

I asked the report’s authors to calculate how much the council could have earned from this deal. Looking at examples of other land deals and other local councils, their conservative estimate is £33m, plus up to £1.7m a year in rent. Both the council and the joint venture described that sum as “speculative”. The council also said it expected more money to come through an overage or profit-share arrangement, although it did not provide any details of this agreement nor are they on public record. But for comparison, that £33m would more than cover what the city pays in a year to put up families in temporary housing.

Sheikh Mansour will presumably know exactly how much Manchester Life is netting him – and can look forward to 10 centuries of rental income from the land in this great city. He seems content with the arrangement. A few months after Bernstein retired from the council, he was appointed as the senior strategic adviser for City Football Group, owned by Sheikh Mansour. I asked the council what procedures it followed on Bernstein’s subsequent appointment with such an important business partner. It could not tell me.

Perhaps the nicest of the Manchester Life developments is Murrays’ Mill, a conversion of one of the world’s first steam-powered cotton mills into flats. It stands in the heart of Ancoats, alongside Bengal Street. My family is originally from Bengal, a region that once wove the best textiles in the world, muslins so fine that the French sighed over their perfection. It was the East India Company’s entry point into the riches of south Asia.

To look at such names carved on to brick is to remember how Manchester came to its industrial wealth and Britain to global pre-eminence, from cotton picked by enslaved people and through destroying foreign industrial competition, even criminalising the sale of Indian textiles. But today it symbolises something else: a country celebrating its receipt of capital from other states under the shabbiest of terms as a triumph. The difference is that Indians were under no illusions about what had befallen them.