TENANT FARMERS must make sure that they pay their rent on time even if they have not received a rent demand from their landlord – because failure to do so can result in a breach of lease which can lead to a notice to quit.

The Scottish Tenant Farmers Association issued this warning following reports that some tenants, whose rents are currently in dispute, have omitted to pay their rent on time because their landlord did not issue the customary demand.

STFA chairman Angus McCall said: “Although a landlord is not obliged to send out invoices for payment of rent, most do and it is unsettling when tenants suddenly do not receive the usual invoice.

“Rent must always be paid on time, and the Land Court, in Mount Stuart trust v McCulloch ruled that, even when a rent is in dispute, the old one must be paid until the new one has been set.

“Factors should be as well aware of this as their tenants and not confuse the issue by departing from the usual practice. Tenants should be careful not put their tenancies in jeopardy by a breach of lease and not fall into the trap of non payment of rent,” warned Mr McCall.

He added that the tenanted sector had become “distracted from the real business of farming” by its preoccupation with rent reviews, which have become increasingly contentious and complex.

Last week, the STFA appealed to cabinet secretary Richard Lochhead to sort out the growing rent review “fiasco”.

At a meeting with Mr Lochhead in Elgin, Mr McCall proposed that the current system be replaced with a panel of suitably trained and accredited experts who would be qualified to either fix rents or act as arbitrators.

He also suggested that there should be a simplification of the statutory process so that rents would be assessed according to what the farm is capable of producing, rather than on the “open market” basis which operates at present.

“The cabinet secretary has expressed his willingness to look into ways of sorting out the situation,” said Mr McCall.

Mr Lochhead agreed that the current rent review system was “too complex, costly and time consuming – we need to find a workable solution which better reflects the true value of both individual farms and markets.”