Part III Hill Land
Special measures for certain areas
51 Schemes for co-ordinated amalgamations and reshaping of agricultural units.
(1)
If it appears to a Rural Development Board that in any part of their area there is a need, for the benefit of the community and for the mutual advantage of those owning and occupying the agricultural land, of a co-ordinated scheme of amalgamations of agricultural land, reshaping of agricultural units and afforestation to be effected by transfers and exchanges of land and grants, surrenders, renunciations and variations of tenancies, the Rural Development Board may proceed to make a scheme under this section.
(2)
The scheme—
(a)
shall be based on a comprehensive plan for the uses of the land, including afforestation, and
(b)
shall be published and made available for inspection in such manner, and with such maps, plans and notes, as the Board consider appropriate,
and the Board shall, in publishing notice of the scheme and in such other ways as appear to them appropriate, invite submissions to the Board on any aspect of the scheme.
(3)
The Board shall report to the appropriate Minister on the substance of the submissions made to them on the scheme and the appropriate Minister, after taking that report into consideration, may if he thinks fit direct a public inquiry to be held as regards the scheme.
(4)
After taking the Board’s report into consideration, together with the report of the person holding the public inquiry, if any, the appropriate Minister shall either reject the scheme or approve it with or without modifications.
(5)
If the appropriate Minister approves the scheme, with or without modifications, he shall publish notice of his approval in such manner as appears to him appropriate, and shall direct the Board to seek to negotiate with those concerned for the carrying into effect of the transactions required to implement the scheme.
(6)
The Board shall endeavour to arrive at proposals for a scheme which all concerned will be willing to implement, and for that purpose the Board may carry out all or any of the necessary negotiations for particular transactions, prepare or commission draft agreements, conveyances and other instruments and, by settling terms for inclusion in agreements for sale and other instruments or by drawing up a programme for the carrying out of the transactions, make arrangements for ensuring that the scheme, or any interdependent transactions, cannot be partly fulfilled and partly unfulfilled; and may carry out that and any other preliminary work notwithstanding that, if the scheme is unfulfilled, their expenses may be irrecoverable.
(7)
If the appropriate Minister is satisfied—
(a)
that, except for transactions which in all involve the transfer of, or of estates or interests in, land (in this subsection called “the outstanding land") of an F1area small in comparison with the total F1area of the land affected by the scheme, agreements, enforceable in law, have been made to enter into all the transactions required to implement, or complete the implementation of, the scheme,
(b)
that the Board have entered into agreements, enforceable in law, such that, if they acquired the outstanding land, there would be agreements, enforceable in law, to carry out all the transactions required to implement, or complete the implementation of, the scheme,
(c)
that the terms of the scheme on which the transactions transferring the outstanding land were to be carried out were equitable,
the Board may be authorised by the appropriate Minister to acquire the outstanding land compulsorily, and the F2Acquisition of Land Act 1981 or, as the case may be, the M1Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) (Scotland) Act 1947 shall apply F3as if the Board were a local authority within the meaning of the relevant Act and as if this section were comprised in an Act in force immediately before the commencement of the relevant Act.
(8)
In this section “the appropriate Minister” means, in relation to Wales, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretary of State for Wales acting jointly.