Horses and Crofts

I am a horse person and a dog person.  At the moment, my life is full of dogs rather than horses. I am not complaining about that, because my 3 bring me huge joy on a daily basis. But horses are part of me and will be always. Being involved in crofting in a legal sense, the question of horses and crofts crops up regularly (and increasingly).

The combination of horses and crofts is not always an easy or obvious one, but it is increasingly common. It is not now an unusual site to see horses grazing on croft land, and one of my favourite crofting myths is that this is not permitted by crofting legislation.  That may have been the case at some point in history, strictly speaking (given that horses are not agricultural), but no longer, and the short answer currently is that you can keep horses on a croft. In fact, there is a common grazing in Shetland grazed entirely by Shetland ponies rather than sheep or cattle.

The small print can be found in s. 5C of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993, which sets out a (tenant) crofter’s duty to cultivate and maintain the croft; one of the primary statutory duties. A mirror provision for owner-occupier crofters can be found at s. 19C of the 1993 Act.

To summarise, a crofter (or owner-occupier crofter) must either “cultivate” the croft, or else put it to “another purposeful use”.

“Cultivate” is defined as including “the use of a croft for horticulture or for any purpose of husbandry, including the keeping or breeding of livestock, poultry or bees, the growing of fruit, vegetables and the like and the planting of trees and use of the land as woodlands”.

“Another purposeful use” is defined as “any planned or managed use which does not adversely affect the croft, the public interest, the interests of the landlord or owner, or the use of adjacent land.”

The combination of horses and crofts qualifies more readily as ‘another purposeful use’, rather than ‘cultivation’, which is why it probably was not (strictly speaking) permitted before 2007, when the concept of non-agricultural use of crofts began.

One must be careful, however, when making improvements to a tenanted croft when those improvements relate primarily to another purposeful use (rather than to cultivation). Unless a landlord has consented to the crofter putting the croft to another purposeful use, the crofter cannot claim compensation for the improvements in question if (1) the crofter decides to renounce the tenancy or (2) the tenancy is terminated (for whatever reason).

In practice, tenancies are rarely renounced under any circumstances, (and it is particularly rare when the improvements are of value), because the market in crofts is such that a greater return is invariably realised if the tenancy is assigned for consideration, rather than renounced. Termination of tenancies is only slightly less unusual but does happen on occasion.

In short, horses and crofts can be a perfectly workable combination, but just be careful about the improvements you are making to accommodate them.

Call or email me if you need advice – eilidh@camus.scotor 07876 513404.