Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1875

The Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 92) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative government. The Act provided a list of improvements for whose unexhausted value a departing tenant farmer could claim compensation from the landlord.[1] These were divided into three types. First, the more expensive improvements (such as a new building or a new orchard) needed the landlord's permission if they were to be liable for compensation. Second, improvements that the tenant had informed the landlord he was going to undertake (such as draining land or liming). Third, improvements which the tenant could be compensated for without having to give prior notice to the landlord (temporary improvements such as cultivation and manuring).[2]

However, the Act was not compulsory and so landlords could contract out of it.[3] The Liberal MP Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen complained in the House of Commons: "This Bill allowed everybody to do exactly what he could do at present without it, and compelled no one to do anything which he had not hitherto done and did not wish to do. All that the Bill did was to give an indication of the course which the Legislature thought ought to be pursued, but which Her Majesty's Government had not the courage to say should be carried out".[4] In 1883 William Gladstone's Liberal government passed an Act that made compensation compulsory.[5]

Notes
  1. Christable S. Orwin and Edith H. Whetham, History of British Agriculture 1846-1914 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p. 171.
  2. Orwin and Whetham, p. 171.
  3. Orwin and Whetham, p. 172.
  4. HC Deb 24 June 1875 vol 225 c 460
  5. Orwin and Whetham, p. 298.
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