The Tenant and the Fisherman

Britain’s energy and environmental transformation is usually measured in gigawatts, hectares, investment and carbon. But beneath those numbers are people whose livelihoods depend upon land and sea they do not own. The tenant farmer and the fisherman expose the same uncomfortable question: when government policy gives an asset a more valuable new purpose, what happens to the person who was already making a living from it?

Robert and Emma Sturdy did not own the land beneath their farming business at Eden Farm near Old Malton in North Yorkshire.
They farmed it.
That distinction eventually became decisive.
In February 2025, the Government approved a solar farm and battery-storage development at Great Sike Road after recovering the planning appeal for ministerial determination. The development was authorised for 40 years.
Buried inside the 142-page decision is one of the clearest examples I have yet found of what Britain’s changing use of land can mean for a tenant farmer.
Robert Sturdy held an agricultural tenancy over Eden Farm. Some 44.52 hectares of his tenancy fell within the 52.86-hectare appeal site — just under half the land covered by his agricultural tenancy. The Planning Inspector recorded that the Sturdys were running a successful farming business which the family had worked hard to create and sustain. Their tenancy was protected under the Agricultural Holdings Act, providing lifetime security with succession rights capable of extending across generations.

This was not a farmer deciding to diversify his own business into solar.
It was somebody else’s land being given another economic purpose.
And the Inspector could hardly have been clearer about the consequences.
If the scheme proceeded, he found, Mr Sturdy would face an incontestable notice to quit the relevant land. He would lose access to all the land required for the development. The Inspector concluded that the scheme would cause “irreversible detriment” to Eden Farm as an existing successful agricultural business and that the damage to the wider local agricultural economy carried substantial weight against the proposal.

The Secretary of State agreed.
The final decision accepted that the impact on the tenant was significant. It accepted irreversible detriment to Eden Farm. It accepted erosion of the wider agricultural economy. It gave that harm substantial weight.
And then it granted planning permission anyway.
Why?
Because in the final planning balance the Government gave significant weight to available grid capacity, significant weight to renewable electricity and significant weight to biodiversity benefits. It concluded that, despite conflict with the development plan and despite the damage identified to the farming business, the wider material considerations justified approval.

That single decision deserves far more attention than it received.
It strips away much of the comforting language surrounding the energy transition.
Nobody needed to pretend there would be no effect on the farmer.
The effect was officially recognised.
Nobody needed to pretend the business would emerge unchanged.
The Government expressly accepted irreversible detriment.
The policy balance was simply made in favour of something else.
That is what land-use transition looks like when viewed from the bottom rather than from Whitehall.
At national level it is a solar target.
On an investment spreadsheet it is generating capacity.
To the planning system it is a 52.86-hectare development.
To a tenant farmer it can be almost half the land on which a successful business has been built.
The Sturdy case is particularly important because it prevents this investigation descending into exaggeration.
Not every tenant affected by a renewable-energy scheme is evicted.
Not every surrendered tenancy destroys a business.
Not every landlord behaves badly.
There are negotiated settlements, compensation agreements, replacement land and cases in which farmers and landowners willingly participate.
At Botley West in Oxfordshire, for example, Blenheim Estate began discussions with affected farmers in November 2021. The applicant’s own examination evidence says vacant possession was subsequently secured and that three longer-term Agricultural Holdings Act tenancies were surrendered through independently negotiated settlements — two in spring 2022 and the third in spring 2023. The applicant also states that compulsory-purchase powers were not used to obtain those surrenders.

That should be described accurately.
They were negotiated tenancy surrenders, not proven forcible evictions.
At Rosefield in Buckinghamshire, the record is similarly precise. Claydon Estate entered an agreement with tenant Mark Fowler in April 2024 for the voluntary surrender of his long-term agricultural tenancy in return for a new short-term tenancy which later expired in September 2025. Both sides were legally represented.

Again, the word voluntary matters.
But so does the larger pattern.
The tenancy ends.
The agricultural use changes.
The owner retains the underlying land.
A new economic opportunity replaces the old arrangement.
The farmer’s rights derive from occupation and contract.
The owner’s rights derive from ownership.
When the economic value of those two interests diverges sharply, ownership normally occupies the stronger position.
That is why the Government’s own 2026 Land Use Framework makes such an extraordinary admission. It says England’s tenanted sector manages around 32 per cent of agricultural land , approximately 2.9 million hectares , and acknowledges that policy has historically been designed around owner-occupiers, leaving tenant farmers disadvantaged or excluded from opportunities arising from land-use change. The Government now says a just transition must allow tenants to stay on the land and obtain access to the value these changes can create.

Those words could almost have been written as a response to the cases we have uncovered.
Stay on the land.
Access the value.
Because those are precisely the two things a tenant cannot take for granted.
The independent Rock Review reached the same problem from another direction. It said tenants have rights to the quiet enjoyment of rented land, to develop viable businesses and to a future livelihood. It warned that emerging environmental and natural-capital markets could disadvantage tenants unless benefits were shared fairly and recommended safeguards against landlords unilaterally putting tenanted land into schemes involving permanent land-use change.

Government accepted much of the underlying concern. Its response acknowledged the risk of land being resumed from tenants for woodland or environmental schemes and agreed that policy development needed to consider how such changes affect the tenanted sector.

The reason this matters goes far beyond solar.
As the previous article in this series showed, the field is acquiring multiple possible identities.
Food-producing land.
Solar site.
Biodiversity bank.
Woodland.
Carbon project.
Nature-recovery land.
Flood-management asset.
Each can generate a different income.
The tenant’s livelihood may depend on keeping the land agricultural.
The owner’s financial interest may increasingly depend upon considering whether it should become something else.
Now travel several hundred miles north and replace the tractor with a fishing boat.
The economics change.
The underlying problem does not.
A fisherman can own his vessel, his nets, pots, dredges and equipment. He can hold licences and quota entitlements. He can have decades of knowledge about where particular species feed, migrate and congregate.
What he usually does not possess is ownership of the particular seabed on which that knowledge depends.
When a wind developer acquires rights over marine space, therefore, the fisherman cannot respond in the way a neighbouring freeholder might respond to a solar developer.
He cannot say: this is my seabed; negotiate a lease with me.
His economic use of that space and legal control over the underlying asset are different things.
This distinction is becoming more important because Britain’s seas are being asked to perform more functions simultaneously than perhaps at any point in modern history.
Offshore wind.
Electricity export cables.
Interconnectors.
Marine protected areas.
Nature restoration.
Carbon capture and storage.
Shipping.
Defence.
Oil and gas.
Aquaculture.
Fishing.
Every one requires space.
Government calls the process marine planning.
The fishing industry has another expression for what can result.
Spatial squeeze.
Remarkably, the Scottish Government now uses the phrase itself in published environmental analysis. It says growing demands on marine space are producing spatial squeeze for established sectors, particularly fishing, whose traditional grounds face increased competition. It identifies nature-conservation restrictions and offshore renewable development — particularly offshore wind — among the activities with the largest spatial footprints.

This is not merely fishermen resisting change.
Scotland’s own offshore-wind monitoring guidance lists the potential consequences.
Loss or restricted access to fishing grounds.
Changes in catch rates.
Displacement of fishing effort.
Longer steaming distances.
Greater fuel costs.
Gear interference.
Collision risk.
Changes to local fishing patterns.
And, in some circumstances, fishing activity ceasing altogether.

Separate Scottish Government displacement guidance goes further. It says loss of access to productive grounds can alter catches and income and could ultimately result in an individual exiting the fishing industry.

That sentence should sit beside every glossy artist’s impression of the offshore energy transition.
Not because it proves that every offshore wind farm will destroy fishing.
It does not.
Different fishing methods interact differently with wind farms. Turbine spacing, cable burial, vessel size, gear type, seabed conditions and individual skippers’ assessments of risk all matter. Government guidance explicitly recognises that fishing may resume within some developments and that impacts must be considered project by project.

But coexistence is not automatic either.
And here the comparison with tenant farming becomes powerful.
A planning document might describe a solar farm as temporary because permission lasts 40 years.
For a farmer, 40 years can be an entire career.
A marine planner might describe displacement as the movement of fishing effort from one location to another.
For the fisherman, the alternative ground may already be occupied by another fleet, be less productive, be farther from port, require more fuel or simply not be suitable for the gear he operates.
The administrative vocabulary is spatial.
The lived consequence is economic.
Scotland’s own 2025 monitoring guidance acknowledges this. Displaced vessels may face greater competition on alternative grounds, lower or altered catches and increased steaming distances. It also warns of consequences beyond the individual boat: processors, supply-chain businesses, local services, cultural heritage and rural communities can all be affected when fishing activity declines.

These are not insignificant industries.
Provisional official figures for 2025 record 1,993 active Scottish fishing vessels, employing around 3,738 fishers. Scottish vessels landed approximately 509,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish worth £960 million during the year.

Behind that £960 million are harbours, processors, engineers, chandlers, fuel suppliers, auction markets, hauliers and families.
Fishing is not merely a boat on a blue patch of a government map.
Neither is farming merely a tractor on a green one.
And yet there is a striking similarity in how both can disappear inside national policy.
When government considers agricultural land at national scale, 44 hectares can look insignificant.
When government considers Scottish waters at national scale, one fishing ground can look insignificant.
For the business built around that particular asset, the scale is completely different.
That is why percentages can mislead.
Losing 40 hectares from the country’s millions of hectares of farmland is statistically negligible.
Losing 40 hectares from a single farming enterprise might change its entire economics.
Closing or obstructing a fraction of British waters may look minor in square kilometres.
If those kilometres contain somebody’s most productive scallop, nephrops or white-fish ground, the effect on that business can be completely disproportionate.
Policy looks down from above.
Livelihoods are lived from below.
There is another similarity.
Both groups are repeatedly told that change brings opportunity.
Farmers can diversify.
Fishermen can coexist with offshore wind.
Land can deliver environmental services.
Ports can service turbines.
Rural communities can benefit from investment.
Some undoubtedly will.
But diversification is a very different proposition when you control the underlying asset.
A landowner can diversify the land itself.
The tenant may only be able to diversify within whatever rights remain under his tenancy.
The Crown Estate or Crown Estate Scotland can lease seabed rights.
The fisherman cannot diversify by renting his traditional fishing ground to an offshore wind developer because he does not own it.
He may receive mitigation or compensation in appropriate circumstances.
That is not the same thing as owning the asset and negotiating its commercial value.
This is the distinction running through the entire Robin Hood in Reverse investigation.
Ownership determines where you stand when policy changes value.
At Eden Farm, the agricultural tenancy had real legal protection. It carried lifetime security and succession rights. Yet government still approved a development whose own decision expressly recognised irreversible detriment to the farming business.

At sea, a fishing business may have far less control over the particular location upon which it depends.
That does not mean renewable-energy developers should never receive land or seabed rights.
Britain requires electricity.
Infrastructure has to go somewhere.
Environmental protection also requires space.
The difficult question is whether our decision-making systems properly value the businesses already present before a new policy priority arrives.
This is where the word compensation can become dangerously reassuring.
Money can compensate for land surrendered.
Money can compensate for disturbance.
Money can sometimes compensate fishing operators for demonstrable losses.
But compensation and replacement are not the same thing.
A farming business is not simply the annual rent multiplied by a number of years.
It is soil knowledge, rotations, buildings, machinery utilisation, livestock systems, labour, contracting relationships and succession planning.
A fishing ground is not simply its average historic catch multiplied by a monetary factor.
It is location, season, weather, species, tide, gear, knowledge and the relationship between operating costs and the distance from harbour.
There are things a cheque can price.
There are things it cannot recreate.
The Inspector considering Eden Farm understood this better than much of the political debate. He explicitly distinguished the statutory compensation potentially available to the tenant from the wider impact on the Sturdy farming business. He also described the scale of the impact upon the tenants as significant and exceptional compared with schemes without those effects.

Yet permission was still granted.
That is not evidence that the planning system ignored the tenant.
In some ways it is more revealing.
It considered him.
It recognised the damage.
It weighed that damage.
Then policy priorities outweighed it.
The same process is beginning at sea.
Commercial fisheries are consulted.
Environmental assessments model displacement.
Developers employ fisheries liaison officers.
Mitigation strategies are prepared.
Government produces coexistence guidance.
But Scotland’s own 2026 assessment of offshore-wind reform still concludes that expanding offshore wind is likely to have negative effects on commercial fisheries, particularly larger vessels and in regions such as the North East and Shetland where development is concentrated. It anticipates changes in vessel cost and revenue, displacement, conflict between gear types and reduced fishing efficiency.

Again, the impact is known.
The question is what weight it receives when placed against the national objective.
And this may become one of the defining political questions of the next decade.
How many local losses are acceptable in pursuit of a national target?
One tenant farm?
Ten?
One fishing ground?
One harbour?
At what point does a series of individually “acceptable” impacts become a cumulative transformation of the rural and coastal economy?
Government increasingly acknowledges cumulative pressure at sea. Its own research notes evidence gaps after wind farms become operational and warns that increased renewable development, conservation and other marine uses can intensify competition for space.

The same cumulative question needs asking on land.
One solar farm is assessed against its own boundary.
One habitat bank against its own boundary.
One transmission line against its corridor.
One woodland scheme against its acreage.
One housing development against its allocation.
But a farming business does not operate within separate government policy silos.
It experiences all those pressures as one reality.
So does a fishing community.
This is where Britain needs a much more mature definition of a just transition.
It cannot simply mean that the country achieves the target and offers compensation to those who happen to be in the way.
A genuinely just transition should ask whether existing productive businesses can remain viable, whether those who create value from land and sea share fairly in the new value created by policy, and whether national objectives can be achieved in ways that minimise unnecessary destruction of existing livelihoods.
Government itself has effectively accepted that principle for tenant farming. The Land Use Framework says tenants should be helped to stay on the land and access the opportunities and value created by land-use change.

Apply the same philosophy to the sea.
The fisherman should not automatically outrank every other use of marine space.
But neither should he become the residual claimant — the person expected to adapt after everybody else’s allocation has been made.
That is the deeper lesson from the tenant and the fisherman.
Neither necessarily owns the underlying asset.
Yet both can spend decades creating economic value from it.
The farmer improves soil he does not own.
The fisherman accumulates knowledge of grounds he does not own.
Their businesses can be deeply rooted in a place without possessing the legal power that ultimately determines that place’s future.
Then policy changes.
The field acquires a solar value.
The landscape acquires a biodiversity value.
The seabed acquires an offshore-wind value.
An entirely new chain of contracts appears.
Landowner.
Developer.
Infrastructure fund.
Pension investor.
Crown body.
Energy company.
Government.
Each can identify its legal or financial interest.
The person already working the asset may find that his interest is harder to put on a balance sheet.
That is why this series began at the bottom rather than the top.
Follow the farmer.
Follow the fisherman.
Then follow the land.
Follow the seabed.
Follow the contract.
Follow the developer.
Follow the investor.
Follow the government policy.
Follow the money.
Only then can we understand who is actually winning and losing from Britain’s transformation.
Because eventually every grand national policy reaches a particular place.
A particular field.
A particular fishing ground.
A particular family.
At Eden Farm, the Government knew the consequences. Its own decision recorded irreversible detriment to an existing successful agricultural business.
It approved the project anyway.
At sea, government already knows that offshore development can displace fishing, increase costs and, in some circumstances, contribute to fishermen leaving the industry.
More development is coming anyway.
Those decisions may ultimately be judged necessary.
But if they are necessary, ministers should at least have the courage to describe their consequences accurately.
The energy transition is not taking place on an empty map.
Neither is nature recovery.
Britain’s countryside is already worked.
Britain’s seas are already worked.
The people doing that work may not own the asset underneath them.
But that does not make their livelihood worthless.
And it should never make them invisible.

Shane Oxer.  Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy