Powys County Council is “rationalising” its farm estate (the largest of its kind in Wales) – selling off farms and leaving tenant farmers in the lurch.

I wrote an article for the County Times on this topic a month ago, you can read that here.

A meeting was held in Sarn on Tuesday, 27 May 2025 where constituents asked officers of the council for transparency about these farm sales. The transcription of my contribution to that meeting is available below.

“I will yield the floor gladly in a moment Chair, so people can have a right of reply. But I think we should be calling for the abolition of this wretched policy. I think to be fair to the two guys on the panel, they have said here that they are not the decision makers, they don’t make them.

But there are people who make the decisions. And I think that we should be presenting a a cross-party letter to Powys County Council calling for the abandonment of this policy as a medium term ask.

[The policy] is not something that you see everywhere, I’ve been speaking with some people before, informally, before the meeting started.

And I’ve spoken with farmers unions, farmers associations from all over England and Wales. You do see this policy; it is not unique. It does happen elsewhere. But it is not the only answer to a cash strapped local authority and that the woes that they face.

I will gladly hear from the other elected representatives present today, to call for the abolition of this policy in the medium term. It is a medium term ask.

Short term ask: one of the things I wanted to speak about in the short term – and this is directly to the council – because to be fair, the officers cannot answer the question that I just put it to them for the medium term, but for the short term, they can.

I would like to talk about farmers’ mental health. Before I was an MP, I worked for a teacher’s trade union as well as being a teacher. If a teacher was at risk of losing their livelihood, from suspension or whatever reason, and I believe that Powys Council may use this organisation as well, CareFirst, so you have an assigned mental health contact, who you can speak to, who you can talk things through with, who you can receive counselling from.

I am representing several tenant farmers in Powys who are facing eviction, and I’ve been absolutely disgusted by the lack of care shown towards them. These are good tenants and these are not people who have not been paying their way. They’ve been in their farms for decades in some instances. As we’ve heard, thousands of pounds of investment over many, many years.

And the communication frankly has been absolutely dreadful. Getting through, trying to speak to someone, is next to impossible. And there just seems to have been absolutely no thought given to the mental health and wellbeing of the farmers who are going through this. So that’s my ask of the officers from Powys County Council: that they look into that as a matter of the highest urgency.

It is bad when a farmer says to you – I have never heard anything like this – “part of me hopes I fail my TB test, because that way it will put the brakes on this, it’ll hold this up”. So it’s absolutely appalling what people are going through, as a matter of the highest urgency, please, please look into supporting farmers going through this with counselling, mental health and wellbeing help. Thank you.”