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About the Association Purposes Functions and Membership Land Ownership and Management Succession and the Charitable Trust Wider Applicability Links The Land Trusts Association's prime objective is to encourage and facilitate, in appropriate cases, the dedication of estates, farmlands, woodlands, houses and buildings to the public benefit through the establishment of charitable land trusts and by this means to ensure their preservation, use and development. Where such a trust is established, the settlor relinquishes all rights over the land. These rights are given to the trustees of the charity who are required thereafter to manage the corpus of the trust in accordance with the terms of the trust deed, which must be for specified charitable purposes. This Association is not a professional organisation. It does not give or offer professional advice. It is a facilitator only. The Association can put you in touch with the required professionals. Members are people from all walks of life who are concerned for the future of the countryside and who support the concept of the charitable land trust as a vehicle through which may be fulfilled the functions and purposes briefly outlined on this website. The Association recognises that the land ownership, and in particular of a landed estate, carries with it not so much privilege as responsibility. It carries with it also in most cases a real love of the land the countryside and of its people, together with a not unsurprisingly human wish to secure and hand on that love and those responsibilities of future generations of the family if possible. The business of land and estate management is holistic in its outlook in that it recognises that the whole (of the estate) is greater than the sum of its parts and that the welfare of the local community and the long-term management of the estate is more important than the ownership of the land itself. Succession and the Charitable Trust Where management under family ownership can continue into the future without prejudice to these ideals, then there is every reason to hope that it will do so. But there may, for example, be no heir, or perhaps no suitable heir. There may be financial demands, perhaps the need to pay both income and capital taxes, which make the preservation of sections of the estate impossible. Making over the estate, or often only parts of it, to a charitable land trust can virtually eliminate these demands and enable the trustees to preserve what they hold, setting it on a sustainable basis to the ultimate and secure benefit of the land and of the local and national community. It is usual for the freehold of the lands to be given to the trust, though it is known that in certain cases it has been possible for the owner to grant a charitable trust a long lease of the property. Whilst in the majority of cases the use of a charitable land trust has been within the private sphere, it is now common for publicly owned land (eg, urban parks or pleasure grounds in the hands of a local authority) similarly to be put into a charitable land trust to own and manage. Before it can be started the trust must gain the approval of the Charity Commissioners and the Inland Revenue. The Association maintains a record of the organisation and working of a number of charitable land trusts, which are already in being; and is expanding its surveys. Working papers on these trusts are normally made available to members for study (but of course only with the consent of the appropriate trustees). It also publishes Occasional Papers which provide members with further background information.
The Land Trusts Association is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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This website was last updated 11 March 2008 |