The Impact of Major New Roads on Agriculture:legal and administrative aspects

Abstract

An interdisciplinary study was undertaken to discover, rank and seek ways of ameliorating the effects of major road-building across agricultural land. Three principal areas were discerned which gave rise to administrative difficulty. These may be termed comprehension, communication and compensation. Firstly, few practicing agriculturalists have knowledge of planning procedures regarding new roads. What written material there is tends to be scattered, difficult to obtain and often composed in jargon or technical terminology. The important specialist input to decisions which the British administrative system expects of those affected has therefore been imperfect. Secondly, when agriculture has been taken into account, usually at a late stage of planning, it was found that there was a lack of a comparable basis for decision-making between the parties involved. The Ministry of Agriculture's concern for the long-term ‘national farm', District Valuer's calculations of compensation for interests in land at a particular moment and the Department of Transport's desire for an optimal route do not share common assumptions and the basis for ascertaining the ‘national interest’ was found to vary in different cases. The most important parameters of this variation are analysed and discussed. Finally it was found that there was an imbalance between actual farm losses and compensation received. Alternative bases for determining the 'justness' of compensation, based on utilitarian or Rawlsian precepts, are suggested. The legal principal of 'equivalence', putting a man back as he was, was found to be imperfectly suited to what is - in reality - the final stage of an administrative process rather than a purely legal transfer of land.