Livery Yard and grazing what rights do we have as liveries

[Debrachall]

Please can someone help and advise us.... For the past 3 years I have been renting a stables on a yard with grazing there are 6 stables and 5 horses on there 1 of which belongs to the owners sister. I have never met the actual owner, her brother who is an ex councillor. 2 years ago the owners sister became ill and asked me to run the yard for her in return I would not have to pay for my stable @£25 per week my duties wered
1. Collect and deliver the liveries rent to her which was done every 3 months.
2. look after her horse which included total care, feeding purchasing its feed out of the rent etc.
3. keep the yard in good order and make sure all liveries followed the rules as to turnout etc. and kept up with their rent.
I have done this for 2 years and the liveries on there have all abided by the rules, paid their rent and looked after the yard. For the past couple of months we had heard rumours that the land was up for sale which I challenged the owners sister about to be told over and over it was not. Last weekend the sister announced she wanted to come back and run the yard and thanked me for everything that I had done. I once again questioned her about the land being up for sale she told me she had spoken to her brother and guaranteed 100% that the land was not up for sale.
Yesterday I found out it is for sale with a local estate agent and was listed 2 days ago.
SO my question is do we have any rights, can they just tell us to leave, we are situated in the Blackpool area there are no spare stables around, it is a bad time of year to look for stables and we are all in fear that we are going to end up having no stable for our horses.

Many thanks Debra x

[theartfullodger]

Do you have a written tenancy? If so, what does it say about such circumstances?

What are the notice requirements - for both tenant & landlord? Has landlord or landlord's representative serve a notice to quit on you?

Are you in a position to buy at the price asked?

A landlord is perfectly entitled to sell his investment: What I'm not sure about is, does selling mean tenancy end & tenant has to vacate (for residential tenancies tenancy continues.., tenant can stay, continues on same terms) - sorry, not my area.

Useful info here.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/agricultural-tenancies

[Debrachall]

We have not been served notice to quit we have never been given written tenancies

[Lawcruncher]

The situation is not entirely clear as there may be devil in the detail, but from the information supplied it looks like you have a business tenancy protected by Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Such a tenancy can only be ended by the landlord by a special form of notice and upon certain conditions being fulfilled. If you have such a tenancy it will carry on after a sale and the new owner will be your landlord.

[islandgirl]

It is unusal that there was no original livery contract but as far as I understand they are usually for a set period and have a notice clause built in. They are more of a licence than tenancy I suppose - shared facilities etc. I struggle to see why the OP would have a business tenancy though I know Lawcruncher is the expert in these matters. The free stable for collecting rent etc was an informal reciprocal arrangement and I would not think it constitutes a business tenancy. Why can the new owner not give reasonable notice and remove the horses from the stables should they so wish?

[Lawcruncher]

On re-reading the first post I think I may have misinterpreted the arrangement. I was under the impression that Debrachall was operating a livery business, but it seems that she may only have been stabling her own horses. Perhaps she can confirm the position.

[JennyWren1]

Where I am the arrangements are usually 1) Business tenancy where a business is being run, e.g. riding school 2) Farm Business Tenancy - usually where the equestrian enterprise has grown out of a farm or includes lots of land and 3) Licence arrangement.

The licence is the most common by far usually because of shared facilities and the landlord not wanting to put things like repairing obligations in the hands of the horse owners.

OP, I don't think you have a lot of rights. It's common to give one rental period of notice here, in your case this sounds like 3 months.

[Never what it seems]

Having observed a few landowners who have sold their yards over the years it rarely turns out well for their tenants. on one yard that I know of the liveries an a saturday were told that the place was sold and they had to be off the place by sunday night. It also appears that with the owners sister having a horse there you would not have a tenancy as you are not in full occupation.

[Jon66]

I think in all probability you have a licence and as such no rights to continue to occupy without agreement from the owner of the land.

[JK0]

Is there any way o/p could club together with the other users to buy the place? (Rather like buying a freehold of flats.)