Rural
You’ll love it if…
you’re more at home stomping about in a field in a pair of muddy wellies than you are strutting around a high-rise office in a designer suit.
Dimitri Harrison >
Director, Harrison Rural Consultancy, Shropshire
David Powell >
Rural surveyor, Fisher German LLP, Banbury and Worcester offices
Rural Chartered Surveyors provide advice on land and buildings to members of the rural community. An important part of their work comprises asset management and development – this can lead them into giving advice to farmers and landowners. They can also become involved with other businesses in the countryside such as the utilities responsible for gas, electricity, water and telephones.
Rural Chartered Surveyors are central in maintaining integral links within the countryside and for those who work within it. A list of the professional group’s areas of special responsibilities include:
• Rural asset consultancy, agency (which includes procurement, letting, investment agency and auctioneering) and management
• Rural land, coastal, agriculture, forestry, sporting and woodland management and valuation
• Rent reviews and lease reviews
• Auctioneering, valuation and compensation in respect of livestock and agricultural deadstock.
Because the countryside is an evolving environment, professional advice on how emerging regulations and practices affect a client’s business plan has never been more valuable. This is true whether one is a conservation advisor enhancing the landscape or an agent looking for new uses for property. This in turn has implications for the profession as Chartered and Associate Surveyors become more involved in specialist areas of work. Their role is increasingly involved not only in professional and technical aspects but also in business, resources management, consultancy as well as leaders within the rural community. Clearly, rural asset management thrives in changing circumstances.
Being an active RICS member in the rural environment is about advising clients from all walks of life; from charities to investment banks, from government agencies to farming tenants on how to make the best use of their property to improve their business.
The scope for advice is wide; it can involve selling houses but it can also involve recommending options for reusing redundant property or implementing a strategy to bring a nature reserve into a favourable condition or even advice on diversification. More and more Rural Chartered Surveyors are also getting heavily involved in environmental work, which includes assistance with grants and agri-environmental schemes, and environmental consultancy.
