Agricultural Occupancy Restrictions

[Supersix]

If you are living in an AOC house does the tenent have to be in agriculture or forestry. I am working in flood defence for the Environment Agency taking trees out of rivers and undertaking other maintenance duties on river banks. Do I qualify to live in an AOC property?

[buildersmate]

That's an incredibly good question to which I'm not sure anyone has ever challenged before.
here's a starter for you:

The Agricultural Wages Act 1948 s.17 provides that agriculture includes: dairy farming; the production of any consumable produce which is grown for sale, or the consumption or other use for the purposes of a trade or business or of any other undertaking (whether carried out for profit or not); the use of land as grazing, meadow or pasture land, orchard or osier land or woodland or for market gardens or nursery grounds.

An agricultural worker is someone who is "employed" under a contract of service or apprenticeship to undertake agricultural work anywhere in England or Wales.

You won't get away with the Forestry angle, but you might on the Osier land bit.

[Supersix]

Thanks Buidersmate,

I think I may still be on dodgy ground going down the osier land bit. We stopped cutting osiers years ago. It was used in bundles to stop the banks from erosion. Now days if we use it, it is bought in from Holland!