Donna is a Senior Associate in the Agricultural and Rural Estates Team, based in the Exeter Office.
Donna is a highly specialised agricultural and rural property solicitor with over 10 years of exclusive practice in the sector. Donna acts for rural estates, private and public sector landowners, farm tenants, and private and institutional lenders on complex acquisitions and disposals of farms and farmland, rural estates, woodlands and country houses. She is also highly experienced in advising on agricultural tenancies, surrenders, title matters (including easements, covenants, common rights, and manorial and sporting rights), pre-emption agreements and overage provisions. Recent case examples include:
• Managing the post-probate transfer of a large landed estate (approximately 10,000 acres) partly into a family farming partnership and partly into the sole ownership of a beneficiary, including transfer of commoners' grazing rights and a boundary rectification applications .
• Acting on the acquisition of a substantial acreage from a seller's limited company (£2.4 million), advising on rights to mines and minerals, overage provisions benefitting a public authority, title restrictions, absence of easements, boundary anomalies, unregistered land, scheduled monuments, open access land, holdover provisions and a contract farming agreement.
• Managing multiple concurrent transactions for a farming client totalling over £5 million: acquisition of a 93-acre farm (including on-site business), further land purchase and refinancing of a 205-acre holding — coordinating environmental issues, overage provisions, title restrictions, existing tenancy advice and a lender-required partnership agreement to achieve synchronised completion.
• Acting on the acquisition of a disused rural site (£1.35 million) following the former owner's death, resolving multiple title complexities including unregistered and possessory land, missing title deeds, riparian rights, third-party rights of way and fishing rights, and a commercial tenant without a formal agreement.
• Advising on an AHA succession tenancy review; and acting on the sale of part of a farm holding to a sitting tenant farmer, encompassing surrender of an AHA tenancy, grant of a Farm Business Tenancy, option agreement, rights of pre-emption and overage provisions.
• Advising an estate farming partnership on the purchase of approximately 230 acres including advice on two grazing licences, a commercial shoot lease, a proposed byway open to all traffic ('BOAT') application, sites of archaeological importance, a country wildlife site, and the grant and reservation of new rights and covenants — completing within a critical pre-budget deadline.
