Report - Section 1.1

1.1   The High Weald Area

The WARR (Wealden and Rother Rural Renewal Partnership) Leaderplus area consists of the 32 rural parishes of Rother District, together with 13 parishes in Wealden District. This rural hinterland north of Eastbourne, Bexhill and Hastings exhibits two features:

• Low economic performance – GDP is 63% of the UK average; and
• High environmental quality – 82% of the area lies within the High Weald AONB

which imposes constraints on leisure activity.

The area has a unique cultural and historical heritage, with a considerable area of semi-natural woodland and a once thriving local ironwork industry. Farming is characterised by economically marginal landholdings of below 50ha. The challenge for the WARR Partnership is to create a sustainable rural economy for local people whilst ensuring that the amenity value of the area is not lost but improved.

Agriculture in the High Weald is traditionally based around grassland enterprises: beef, sheep and dairy. Farms are small, predominantly owner-occupied, average 42 hectares in size (c100 acres) and are characterised by small and irregular-shaped fields often bounded by hedgerows and small woodlands. Production is poor due to the area´s varied landform, waterlogged soils and cold climate, which have resulted in low farm incomes and the precariousness of the agricultural industry in the area. Recent trends have seen an increase in the area of rough grazing and a fall in the area of more productive, younger grassland.

The High Weald Land Management Initiative (HW LMI) has been working with land managers, rural businesses and others interested in the environmental, social and economic well being of the area. Their aim has been to deliver effective integrated rural support in order to maintain and enhance the environmental, economic and social fabric of the High Weald.

In 2001, FPDSavills Research was asked to investigate land ownership and land use in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (HWAONB), for the HW LMI. They identified the following characteristics of land market activity.

The HW AONB´s predominance of small livestock farms, which are unsuitable for low cost commodity production, makes it an area where significant restructuring seems likely to take place in agriculture;

• The turnover of land in the HW AONB is estimated to be approximately double the national average and higher than other parts of the South East of England;
• During 2001, over 2,300 acres were publicly marketed for sale in the HW AONB;
• Around 70% of land publicly marketed was offered by working farmers, the majority because there was no willing successor to continue the business. The proportion of buyers who are working farmers is significantly below the national average;
• Farms with amenity and residential aspects attract a premium over commercial farmland. Lifestyle buyers (new and existing) purchased around 50% of the area sold and represented almost 60% of the total number of purchasers. The activity of lifestyle buyers in the HW AONB is significantly higher than the national average;
• The pattern of selling suggests that the ownership of land in the HW AONB will become increasingly fragmented as whole farms are often lotted, and other farmers are selling outlying parcels of land;
• The high proportion of 'farmer-sellers' and ‘lifestyle buyers' combined with the low proportion of farmers who are buying farmland will result in the gradual transfer of land ownership from farmers to non-farming private landowners;
• The area of agricultural land in the HW AONB fell by just over 24,000 acres between 1998 and 2000. Almost all of the lost agricultural land is pasture; much of this area could lie in the ownership of lifestyle landowners.

FPDSavills´ research about new entrants to the land market reveals some interesting agricultural output:

• They are more likely to want to adopt environmentally friendly farming practices;
• They have low levels of experience and are outside the main networks for disseminating advice and information on land management practices;
• Their primary concern is likely to be with the amenity of the property;
• Their management can lead to poor utilisation of grassland, particularly for horse grazing, leading to weed invasion and neglected appearance. The environmental quality of species rich pasture can deteriorate quickly.