Sir, – The word amnesty conjures up an image of the Wild West, of illegal goings on, of something taken or kept without permission and now to be handed back.

Perhaps Scottish landed estates had this in mind when they offered their amnesty on tenants improvements last year in a frantic bid to defuse the calls for tenants to be given an option to buy their farms – the only real way a tenant can regain lost improvements.

Improvements have, indeed, been taken from tenants and then been charged rent on them, either to themselves or the following tenant.

How can an amnesty be fair when the onus is all on the tenant to provide evidence of improvement works? Tenants don’t bill themselves for labour after all, so why not ask the landlord for evidence and if nothing is forthcoming, the improvements fall to the tenant free of charge?

This may seem unfair, but it is the situation tenants have faced for a very long time .

There will be many rented farms where the buildings, drains and roads were put in place by a tenant long departed, or one who simply renewed a lease at the landlords behest, totally unaware that his improvements would vanish in a puff of smoke the minute he put pen to paper.

Why should these improvements remain with the landlord free of charge?
David Johnstone said last week in The Scottish Farmer that this process should be 'fair', but then started on about the ifs and buts about 'value to an incoming tenant' and 'appropriate to the holding'. This just stinks of yet another ruinous land court saga.

The 2003 act seemed to have answered tenants concerns on improvements, rent, and security of tenure, but after 13 years of unremitting attack by landed interests, virtually the entire act is in ruins.

Rents have spiralled beyond all sense, limited partners have been evicted and improvement law is worse.

Are we going to be sitting here in 2029 saying the same things?

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