A CHANGE in the way the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (AMC) considers loan proposals from landed estates is set to significantly improve the ability of these businesses to access development and improvement funding.

Adrian Cawood from AMC said: “While an excellent track record of providing lending to large diversified estates has been established by AMC over many years, some funding applications have proved challenging, especially where various enterprises have fallen into different policy categories, potentially attracting a myriad of different terms and conditions.

"We've now been able to overhaul our offering to estate-type businesses, which often combine such varying enterprises as in-hand and let farming, let commercial and residential property, renewable energy, tourism, forestry and sporting activities.

"Where previously, the loan application may have been split across agricultural, residential, commercial and so on, we will in future treat the whole business as one. This will make applications for finance simpler – and, hopefully, more successful.”