News
Protecting Your Equine Family Legacy After the Budget
11 Dec 2025
The conversation we’re having most often with equine business owners right now is about succession planning. And it’s urgent in a way it wasn’t six months ago.
Many of the stud yards, livery operations, and competition centres across our region aren’t just businesses – they’re family legacies. Parents who started with a few horses decades ago, built facilities over years, developed breeding programs or established reputations. Children who grew up mucking out, competing, learning the business from the ground up.
The intention was always that the next generation would continue. But the recent Budget changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief have thrown a significant complication into those plans.
Here’s the reality: if your equine operation includes land and facilities with substantial value, the next generation could face inheritance tax liabilities that force them to sell just to pay the tax bill. That’s not succession – that’s dissolution.
What’s changed:
The £1 million Agricultural Property Relief allowance sounds substantial until you consider that even modest equine facilities in our region – land, stables, arenas, equipment – can easily exceed this. Add in valuable breeding stock or competition horses, and the numbers climb quickly.
The combination of APR and BPR changes means family equine businesses need to rethink their succession strategies now, not when it becomes urgent.
What we’re helping families plan:
Lifetime transfers and gift planning – Moving ownership gradually while parents are still active in the business, using available allowances and managing the seven-year rule strategically.
Business structure reviews – Sometimes restructuring how the business operates can improve both current tax efficiency and future succession outcomes.
Valuation planning – Understanding what your operation is actually worth for inheritance tax purposes, and whether there are ways to legitimately reduce that exposure.
Family governance discussions – The technical planning only works if the family is aligned. Who wants to continue the business? What roles will different family members play? These conversations need to happen alongside the financial planning.
Contingency planning – What happens if succession plans need to change? Building in flexibility for unexpected circumstances.
The emotional side of these conversations can’t be ignored. We’re talking about operations families have built over lifetimes, animals they’ve bred and raised, reputations carefully developed. The goal isn’t just tax efficiency – it’s enabling the next generation to continue what’s been started.
This work takes time. The families starting these conversations now, while everyone’s healthy and there’s time to plan properly, are the ones who’ll have options. The families who wait until circumstances force the conversation often find their options much more limited.
If you’re running a family equine business and haven’t reviewed your succession plans since the Budget, now’s the time. These aren’t conversations anyone enjoys having, but they’re too important to avoid.
Our equine team understands these operations from the inside – Lucinda Davenport and Rowena Mottershead both ride and compete themselves, with family members running equine businesses and studs, so when we’re talking about protecting breeding programs or competition yards, we understand what’s at stake beyond the numbers.
Have you started thinking about succession planning for your equine operation yet? To support equine business owners facing these challenges, we’re hosting a Complimentary Equine Event where our specialist team will be sharing practical, strategic tax and financial planning advice tailored specifically to the equine industry:
Equine Strategy: Mastering Tax, Finance & Legal Planning
The Cavalier Centre, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, TF13 6PE
10th February 2026
9.00am – 11.00am
If you’d like to join us, we’d be delighted to welcome you along.
