Chippenham MP Sarah Gibson has welcomed the Government’s decision to raise the inheritance tax threshold for family farms from £1 million to £2.5 million, describing it as a relief for many farmers in Wiltshire while warning that serious pressures on the sector remain.
The increase, announced earlier this week, follows months of concern over proposed changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief, which had sparked strong opposition from farming groups.
Ms Gibson said farmers across Wiltshire had faced more than a year of uncertainty while the proposals were under consideration, at a time when many are already struggling with rising costs, the loss of direct payments and uncertainty around new environmental schemes.
She pointed to the particular challenges faced by Wiltshire farmers, where high land values can disguise the reality that many farms are cash-poor, creating difficulties for succession planning. Farmers operating on or alongside Ministry of Defence land, she added, face additional restrictions on how their land can be used.
The MP welcomed the role played by farmers and the National Farmers’ Union in securing the change, echoing comments by NFU president Tom Bradshaw, who described the original proposals as a “pernicious and cruel tax” and said the higher threshold would be a “huge relief to many” family farms.
However, Ms Gibson warned that the threshold increase should not be seen as the end of the issue, calling on the Government to provide long-term certainty for family farms.
The changes follow reforms to inheritance tax reliefs announced in the 2024 Budget, which prompted sustained lobbying from farming organisations and rural MPs.
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