Agricultural land owned by University

Kate Winters made this Freedom of Information request to Bishop Grosseteste University Automatic anti-spam measures are in place for this older request. Please let us know if a further response is expected or if you are having trouble responding.

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Bishop Grosseteste University should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Bishop Grosseteste University,

SOS-UK is developing a programme to support universities and colleges to manage the agricultural land that they own to achieve their Net Zero targets and to support the recovery of nature and biodiversity in the UK.

We are writing to all universities and colleges across the UK to find out if they (or any wholly owned subsidiary) own agricultural land, so that we can plan our new programme to best fit the needs of the sector.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, we would appreciate it if you could please provide us with responses to the questions below, to help us with this important work.

We define a "wholly owned subsidiary" to be a company or other formally recognised organisation that is under full ownership or control of the university.

We define an "agricultural land" as per the Agricultural Act 1947:

“agriculture” includes horticulture, fruit growing, seed growing, dairy farming and livestock breeding and keeping, the use of land as grazing land, meadow land, osier land, market gardens and nursery grounds, and the use of land for woodlands where that use is ancillary to the farming of land for other agricultural purposes (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo...>)


Our request below therefore excludes any woodland that is managed for commercial production.

Please could you tell us:

1. Does your university, and/or any wholly owned subsidiary, own any agricultural land in the UK?

2. What is the approximate total area, in hectares, of the agricultural land holdings owned by your university, and/or wholly owned subsidiary, in the UK?

3. If the agricultural land that your university, and/or any wholly owned subsidiary, owns is split over multiple holdings under separate management, please could you tell us the number of separately managed agricultural holdings?

4. How many hectares of the agricultural land owned by your university, and/or any wholly owned subsidiary, are managed by staff employed directly by your university and/or the subsidiary?

5. How many hectares of the agricultural land owned by your university, and/or any wholly owned subsidiary, are leased to one or more tenant farmers?

6. Please tell us the type of leases in place on that tenanted land: (a) farm business tenancy (subject to the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995), (b) annual grazing/cropping license, (c) full agricultural tenancy (subject to the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1986), (d) other (please specify)

If you are interested to find out more about this work on farming, climate and nature please get in touch at [email address].

Yours faithfully,

SOS-UK