Crown sells off stretch of farmland for £12m

The 842-hectare Garton-on-the-Wolds estate has been bought by MB

Goodwin, a business group based at Skipsea, near Driffield.

The Crown Estate described the deal as an "excellent return" on the 2.9m it had paid for Garton in 1981.

Nick Harper, its head of rural asset management and development, said: 'We have achieved an excellent return from our initial investment at Garton, getting close to 180 per cent of the estate's market value as a let investment.

"This represents just under 100 per cent of the estimated vacant possession value of the estate."

He added: "Its sale forms part of our wider strategy to achieve longer-term investment and business growth. We remain committed to being a rural landowner and will re-invest the return from the Garton sale into our wider portfolio."

Garton is principally farmed by four tenant farmers and the tenancies will continue under the new owners.

The Crown Estate, a commercial organisation, is one of the UK's biggest landowners with 146,000 hectares, of which 108,000 hectares are agricultural estates consisting of 780 tenancies across 450 major farm holdings.

It also has a diverse 6bn property portfolio, such as the Windsor Estate – which includes Windsor Great Park and Ascot Racecourse.

The Crown Estate pays all its surplus revenue to the Treasury, and in 2008/09 this was 226.5m. The revenue from its rural estate that year was 26.7m – up almost 19 per cent. The property value of the rural estate grew by nearly two per cent.