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Adverse credit finance for a rural property

Adverse Credit, Finance Types and Tips
Is your credit rating stopping you from moving forward with farm finance, land finance or your agricultural mortgage? Are your accounts improving but not good enough for the banks, when considering your farm mortgage or mortgage for land? Are creditors pressurising you? Do you have debt arrears, facing repossession or…

Farm and Country Finance – why it pays to call us

Anecdotes, News & Articles
Just to explain a little more about our ethos at Farm and Country Finance. A customer contacted us to enquire about finance for starting a rural business. The property was ideal for our farm start up finance product. We  learned that they were intending to sell their current unencumbered property, to…

Agricultural Restrictions and occupancy conditions – update

Agricultural Restrictions, Case Studies, Farm Mortgages, Mortgages for properties with land, News & Articles, Planning Legal and Tax
At Farm and Country Finance, we are receiving an increasing number of enquiries from customers who need a mortgage for a property with an agricultural restriction and we can arrange this type of finance but each case is different. An agricultural restriction is a condition imposed by a planning authority,…

Government announces changes to Feed in Tarriff levels

Finance for Renewables, News & Articles
The Government has announced changes to the Feed-in Tariff levels for all renewable technologies. The changes will come into effect from April 1 and have been published on the Ofgem website at https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-programmes/feed-tariff-fit-scheme/tariff-tables The tariff for small-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) plants with a capacity of 250kW or less have been reduced…

Farm Finance for retirement planning

Case Studies
The farm mortgages Farm and Country Finance arranges can be used for any legal purpose. In this case, our customers, Nick and Chris, needed a farm loan to buy an apartment in Spain and were up against a tight timescale. When Chris first contacted us he was very stressed but, after talking to us,…

New farm finance product does the business

Finance Types and Tips, News & Articles
Here at Farm and Country Finance, our new farm finance product is creating great interest and there are now completions under our belt, which makes this a very attractive proposition for rural finance or an agricultural mortgage. The lender is incredibly flexible on income proof and takes projected income into account.…

Testimonial – Mr R Morris of Newport

Customer Testimonials
Farm and Country Finance prides itself in giving clear and unbiased explanations about available agricultural mortgage options available to its potential customers, as this testimonial confirms. ‘Dear Mr Bracegirdle I was most grateful for your time yesterday, you helped to clear things in my mind and explained everything so well,…

Boiler room scams – Shareholders beware

Anecdotes, Finance Tips
It will not come as a surprise, to many of you, that there is a legion of persons out there looking to get money off you for nothing; so beware of the scammers. In recent times, many companies have become aware that some of their shareholders have received unsolicited telephone…

Getting through the political maze using cows

Anecdotes
SOCIALISM: You have two cows; you give one to your neighbour. COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk. FASCISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk. NAZISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and you…

America Sneezes, Britain dies of Pnuemonia?

Anecdotes
Read any Newspaper and there are articles canting on about greedy banks, which just because they have lost money on sub-prime mortgages in America, are trying to get it back off similar cases over here by pushing up interest rates. Well let’s not let the truth get in the way…

Fixed Rates for Farm Finance

Anecdotes
FIX HER AND FORGET HER Mark Bracegirdle FCCA FMAAT Published in Farmer Trader Issues 136, 137, 138 & 141 June – Aug 2007 Hindsight, it is said, is a wonderful thing. Even better would be a crystal ball so we could all know the way interest rates are going to…

Count On Us For Farm Finance

Case Studies, FACF News, Finance Tips, News & Articles
One of the questions any customer should ask is ‘Why should we use Farm and Country Finance to arrange our farm finance or agricultural mortgage?’ Of course, people have a choice and sometimes, irrespective of what we and our testimonials say, they decide to go somewhere else. It may surprise…

New – refinance of farm equipment and machinery

FACF News, News & Articles
Refinance is essentially a means to free up the cash value from assets already owned within your business, injecting much needed capital for use in other areas.   Releasing equity from your existing unencumbered tractors, combines, vehicles, machinery, and potentially even milking and dairy equipment can release funds for a building…

Finance For Wind Turbines

FACF News, News & Articles
Being a market leader in the arrangement of farm finance for some time, it is only to be expected that we should recognise the trends and be arranging finance for wind turbines. Many of our customers, in the rural community, are seeking to diversify into new areas for extra income…

Calm and courteous help with a remortgage for a farmhouse

Case Studies
We are grateful to Mrs K Amor for letting us have some feedback after we arranged a remortgage for a farmhouse. Arranging mortgage for farmhouses is not always straightfoward and it’s nice to know that our efforts in raising farm finance are so appreciated. We hope this gives confidence to other…

Customer was impressed by the way we handled his farm loan

Case Studies
We arranged a long-term farm loan for this customer, Mr Brunt of Ceredigion, whose requirements for farm finance were made difficult by some adverse credit. Mr Brunt was kind enough to write to us with his comments as follows: ‘Throughout our dealings I have been impressed by your professionalism and your…

Fulfilling a dream with our farm finance

Case Studies
Our customer, Miss F of North Manchester, approached us with some difficult circumstances. The farm, which she used for her business, was owned by her grandfather who was elderly and unwell and needed some cash. He had always planned to give the property to our customer but, as he needed…

Our expertise in farm finance is recognised

FACF News
Mark Bracegirdle was recently instructed to act as an expert witness in a divorce case in the Kendal County Court. The brief was to report on the availability of a mortgage for a property with an agricultural restriction. The case, however, was not straightforward; the house was in close proximity…

Finance for Land

Uncategorised
Our customer needed finance for land, which he was buying next door to his house. After the loan for land had completed our customer said this about us: ‘May I take this opportunity to thank you once again, your personal level of customer service was first class. I will stay…

Flaunt the planners at your peril

News & Articles, Planning Legal and Tax
To farmer Robert Fidler he must be hearing that old fairy tale about a wolf huffing and puffing to blow his house down. Without any planning consent at all, Mr Fidler thought it a cracking idea to build a house and hide it behind bales of straw, until he thought…

Rural neighbourhood planning study

News & Articles, Planning Legal and Tax
Consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff has been commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government to carry out a study of neighbourhood planning in rural areas. This exercise will “document the experiences and challenges encountered by neighbourhood planning ‘front runner’ projects in rural areas”. Planning Minister Nick Boles said that at…

Farm and Country Finance Customers Win Business Award

Case Studies, News & Articles
Our highly regarded customers and Yorkshire couple, Dave & Kerry Woodhead who own Pinewood Holiday Park in Scarborough are celebrating after winning a business award from Dragon’s Den Theo Paphitis. Dave and Kerry travelled down to Birmingham to meet up with other winners for a networking event.  This was followed by…

Farming News – January 2012

FACF News, News & Articles
Despite recent gales and torrential rain and the country looking and feeling like a sponge, believe it or not, parts of England remain in underlying drought. Times look somewhat better for our beef and sheep producers in 2012. The drought in South America has impacted on markets for maize (and…

Land banking scams on the increase

News & Articles
Land banking is where an area of land is acquired, by alleged ‘developers’, which is then sub-divided into smaller plots . These are then sold, often under the false pretext that planning consent for development will be granted. Needless to say, prices are grossly inflated above true values. I am pleased to say that we have…

Farm bridging finance – warning!

Finance Tips, News & Articles
We have been receiving a number of enquiries about farm bridging finance. Some of these have come from farmers who are sitting tenants, wanting to buy their farm from a landlord. For example, the Duchy of Lancaster has been selling off a lot of land in 2011. Often there is…

Renewable energy news – some good some bad!

News & Articles
Not surprisingly, we are getting a number of enquiries for finance for renewable energy projects. Whilst we get some enquiries for finance for anaerobic digestion plants (where the investment is higher) most enquiries are for finance for wind turbines or finance for solar panels. A recent  announcement by the Department…

It was opportunity finance after all!

FACF News, Finance Tips, News & Articles
Back at the beginning of August this year we published our post ‘Call us and save £70,000.’ This explained a lot about farm finance and especially bridging finance for a farm. We compared the way we handled this case with the way another company handled it and the savings we…

Farmland flying high

FACF News, News & Articles
According to the most recent Land Market Survey by the Royal Institue of Chartered Surveyors, farmland prices reached an all time high in the first half of 2011 with an estimated average price of a shade over £6,000 per acre. Demand is far outsripping supply – 50% of respondents to…

You couldn’t make it up!

Uncategorised
Looting a Poundland or stealing water – our riot idiots have nothing on these demi-wits mainly from across the pond.  These apparently true stories make some of our rioters look positively Einstein next to the feckless persons contained in them. Please enjoy these little anecdotes though bear in mind, whilst doing…

The riots.

Uncategorised
I’ve read a report suggesting that the recent riots in London and other cities in England will cost the taxpayer £100m. This is on top of the distress and heartache, caused to the majority, by a mindless minority. What investor is going to put money into this once green and…

Call us and save £70,000

FACF News, Finance Tips, News & Articles
One of our competitors has recently changed the term bridging finance to opportunity finance. Presumably, the term opportunity would imply that there is some benefit to the customer. Our competitor appears to be a slick operation – on the day after you call you’ll get a visit and during this visit…

The World’s local bank?

Uncategorised
I had cause to travel to London on 29th July 2011. Given that this meant bending the plastic a little, I thought I’d better call the credit card company, in this case HSBC, to let it know that I’d be doing this – after all I did not want the darlings…

Why use us?

FACF News
We’ve completed a deal today – not much of a surprise but then there were some challenges that required expertise and show why it is best to use us if you have some difficulties. Our customer is based in North Wales and had a property subject to an agricultural tie, that…

The News of the World

News & Articles
There is no doubt that if the News of the World has been doing the things alleged, those involved should have the book thrown at them and the key thrown away. To me, though, it is equally sickening that certain celebrities are jumping on an anti-media band wagon and now…

Under-valued probate house sales – Taxman clamps down

Planning Legal and Tax
We’ve mentioned before about how the current austerity measures, and the lack of tax take, is influencing HM Revenue & Customs to look under stones. And so it is with the under-valuation of probate properties. According to accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young, HMRC has insisted on revaluations, of probate properties, to collect more Inheritance…

Base rate held

News & Articles
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today held interest rates at its record low for the 27th month in a row. Clearly, the committee feels that its priority is the recovery and not inflation. Whilst some people believe that a base rate rise is necessary, it is the case…

High Court shuts down more land banks

News & Articles
 In the eighties film Wall Street, Gordon Gekko makes an infamous speech about greed being good. It would seem though, that greed and the desperate or gullible might go hand in hand with the conduct of knaves – the knaves in this case being land banking companies. Land banking companies buy areas…

Get your money back – repossess the bank

Finance Tips, News & Articles
Only in America you may say but what a delightful story this is. It brings into focus the utter incompetence of the bank in question and warms the cockles of the heart. It also says that when the bank owes you money you should go for it with all guns blazing,…

Supermarkets bullies – no it can’t be true

News & Articles
It is a well known fact that there is an urgent need for a watchdog to stop the supermarkets using bullying tactics with their suppliers. Only recently we suggested that the National Farmers Union was expecting the large chains to act reasonably over the ecoli cucumber scare by not forcing…

There’s Gold in them thar drawers

Finance Tips
Gold is rare and hence valuable Hard to believe, I know, but the entire Universe is made up of 118 known elements (at May 2011). Of these gold is an extremely rare metal; its average concentration is 0.005 parts per million within the Earth’s crust and throughout the World there is between 120,000…

Buy British – how many times do we need to say it?

News & Articles
Would you pay more to avoid E Coli – of course. So the message is clear. Hats of to the National Farmers Union which is shouting the message from the roof tops that British produce is safe and nutritious. The message follows the out break of E Coli in northern Europe. British…

Interest rates freeze

News & Articles
An economic adviser at big cheese accountants Ernst & Young reckons that question marks, over the state of the recovery in the UK, may make it difficult for the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee to consider rate rises soon. Forecasters have suggested that the interest rate will remain at its record low…

The meaning of success

Uncategorised
It seems to me that success these days is measured in terms of material gain and cheap celebrity status though, with my penchant for the deep and meaningful, I thought I would share a poignant definition of the word success. Here goes: –  To laugh often and much; to win…

Jail pensioners and put criminals in a nursing home.

Uncategorised
ANOTHER BRILLIANT SOLUTION – YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE THE RATIONALE FOR PENSIONERS Pensioners would have access to showers, walks and a broad range of activities. Pensioners would  receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental care and medical treatment. Pensioners would not receive the paltry fuel allowance but they’d receive more money than…

Agricultural Property Relief – a common sense approach

Planning Legal and Tax
These days of austerity have resulted in a recession of gigantic proportions and naturally the government exchequer is not immune, with the tax take significantly reduced over the last three years or so. It might then be hardly surprising that HMRC could be looking at angles to collect more where they can…

How to fix the economy

Uncategorised
There are around 10 million people over 50 in the UK work force. Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement on the following conditions: 1) They MUST retire.  Ten million job openings – unemployment fixed 2) They MUST buy a new British car. Ten million cars ordered – Car Industry fixed…

Loose words can cost dear – beware

Planning Legal and Tax
I am not into social media sites – I cannot think of anything worse than providing a window to my private existence and I am unable to understand why people sit for hours on Twitter or FaceBook, but to name two of these sites. However, be warned if you use…

Soaring borrowing in April a concern

News & Articles
Official figures have suggested that Britain had the most miserable April since 1993 when records began. The Office for National Statistics said that public sector net borrowing was £10 billion in April. The figures are on the back of increased spending and falling tax revenues.  The figure was £3.5 billion higher…

Interest rate rises signalled

News & Articles
Spencer Dale , the Bank of England’s chief economist, has suggested in an interview with the Financial Times, that families should plan for interest rates to gradually rise  over the next two years. He also sees a difficult outlook for the economy and said he favoured an immediate rise in interest rates, despite the fragile recovery. …

DC refuses to back GB

News & Articles
You may remember that they called Gordon Brown (or GB for short) the ‘iron chancellor’ because of his handling of the economy. Under Blair, this man spent more on public services, quangos and other lavatorial pursuits than was coming in from record tax takes during the boom (a boom that…

Utmost Good Faith

Planning Legal and Tax
You might be aware that when arranging insurance there is a duty on the proposer to disclose. A contract of insurance is of the utmost good faith or uberrimae fidei which means basically that insurers accept what you tell them – but beware, because I reckon that insurers are now using…

Interest rates result – 6-3

News & Articles
In the recent meeting of the Bank of England on interest rates, six members of the Committee voted in favour of keeping bank base rate at 0.5% whilst three members voted against  with Andrew Sentance preferring to increase bank rate by 50 basis points. The MPC evidently felt that the…

Ernie the Hernie does one

FACF News
Mark B is now recovering well after his op for the repair of an inguinal hernia. The swelling is going down and the bits are becoming a better colour again. Mark waited for the NHS to do this job and went to Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport where he had…

Lies Damned Lies and Statistics

News & Articles
There’s a maxim about the press that says don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story – in other words perhaps we should take everything we read with a pinch of salt. This might be especially so with statistics, because those who prepare them can make…

Wooden spoon for Santander

News & Articles
According to research conducted for the 2011 Moneywise Customer Service Awards, Santander is the worst financial services company for customer service. A sample of some 12,000 or more Moneywise readers rated financial services companies they had used over several products, including current and savings accounts, credit cards through to car and travel insurance. Santander was…

Common sense – unlikely to prevail

News & Articles
According to recent murmurings, the shares in state owned banks should be handed out to taxpayers. The Centre for Policy Studies has suggested that the best way to maximise taxpayer value in Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland is to give them shares, in what it calls…

Farm land bill move

Planning Legal and Tax
Kent Conservative MP Laura Sandys has been given the Parliamentary go-ahead to introduce legislation which would prohibit local authorities granting planning permission involving the development of Grade 1 agricultural land other than in exceptional circumstances. The Planning (Grade 1 Agricultural Land Protection) Bill had its first reading in the Commons…

Coalition urges farm building conversion to residential use

Planning Legal and Tax
Ministers want rural councils to consider changing planning policies to support residential conversion of unwanted farm buildings rather than insisting on employment reuse. That approach was highlighted in the Government’s response to the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s report into farming in England’s upland areas, which include seven…

IMF warns of UK’s strong head winds.

News & Articles
The IMF has warned that Government austerity measures and high levels of consumer debt pose “strong headwinds” for the UK’s economic recovery. According to reports, growth will be “restrained” to 1.7% in 2011 and 2.3% in 2012.  This comes on top of the Bank of England’s governor Mervyn King’s comments that Consumer…

‘UK remains weak but the threat of recession is over’

News & Articles
According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the threat of recession has gone, but the UK’s recovery remains fragile. The economy grew just 0.3pc in the three months to the end of April. The latest GDP figure from the National Institute showed a slowdown in month on…

Financial Support for Small Solar Power Schemes

News & Articles

The Department of Energy & Climate Change is seeking views on proposals aimed at preventing large scale photovoltaic (PV) schemes installed by large commercial organisations from soaking up the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) subsidy, which would otherwise help to support smaller PV schemes submitted by households or communities or other technologies such as wind, hydro and anaeorobic digestion.

Alerts to Threats in 2011 Europe: by John Cleese

Uncategorised
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940…

6 May 2011 – Cornish Pasties and Cumberland Sausages

News & Articles
Cornish Pasties and Cumberland Sausages have both been awarded Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) status that means they can only be made  respectively in Cornwall or Cumberland to their specified recipes. They are the 43rd and 44th British foods to become officially protected across Europe through the PGI scheme. Details of…

6th May 2011 Planning – New Gypsy and Traveller policy proposed

News & Articles

The Government has announced a shake-up of planning policy involving Travellers and Gypsies. In new proposed planning guidelines, the Green Belt and countryside will have more robust protection, local councils will have more discretion, and local planning authorities will have a stronger hand in supporting appropriate development.

FACF are recommended on ‘Field to Farm’ Forum..

FACF News
  It is always nice when people have good things to say about your business. We recently came across this thread on an agricultural forum… Hi All I have just had my mortgage through Farms and country Finance, dealt with a guy called Mark Bracegirdle. I found him very professional…

Getting Through the Political Maze Using Cows

Uncategorised
SOCIALISM: You have two cows; you give one to your neighbour. COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk. FASCISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk. NAZISM: You have two cows. The State takes both and you…

FACF launch ‘Introducer’ scheme

FACF News
Finance for farms, properties with agricultural restrictions and other country property and businesses are often not run of the mill. There are the usual lenders who say they look at this sector though at the prime level the criteria is strict and at sub prime level rates can be expensive…

BOILER ROOM SCAMS – SHAREHOLDERS BEWARE

News & Articles
Thursday, 29 January 2009 It will not come as a surprise, to many of you, that there is a legion of persons out there looking to get money off you for nothing; so beware of the scammers. In recent times, many companies have become aware that some of their shareholders…
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