SAFFERY PARTNER PROFILE: IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID CHISMON, HEAD OF LAND & RURAL ESTATES PRACTICE
As head of the Land and Rural Estates group at Saffery, David Chismon has spent more than a decade helping to build one of the leading landed estate accountancy practices in the country. We sat down with him to talk strategy, stewardship, and why genuine curiosity matters more than technical brilliance.
You read law at Durham University before ultimately moving into accountancy and tax advisory work. What drew you towards landed estates specifically?
My law degree had a big impact on how I work and the discipline I bring day to day. I’ve always had an interest in financial matters as well as the law, and tax advisory work brings those elements together. Tax is essentially built on law, so understanding how legislation is written and interpreted really helps when navigating complex structures.
The move into tax, and then specifically into landed estates, was driven by something simpler: I could see the advice mattered. I began working with multi-generational landed estates and farmers fairly early in my career. Families who had owned and farmed the same land for two hundred years, wanted to understand how they could ensure it would still be there for the next two hundred. There is often a great deal of complexity but at the heart are families trying to make things better for the next generations. That combination hooked me completely.
“The most dangerous thing you can do is walk onto a client’s estate and think you already understand it. Everyone is different. Every family is different. Curiosity isn’t a soft skill, it’s the whole job.”
PRACTICE AND SCALE
Saffery acts for around a quarter of the UK’s largest private landowners. What does it actually take to advise at that scale, and what makes Saffery’s approach distinctive?
Scale in this sector is almost a misleading concept, because no two estates are alike. You can’t apply a template. The ownership structures, the family dynamics, the commercial mix, whether it’s a traditional farming operation, a diversified estate with commercial lettings and renewable energy, or something in transition, all of it is unique. What Saffery does well is invest in genuine depth. Our National Land and Rural Practice Group, which I lead, brings together around 20 partners and over 100 specialist staff across 9 offices in the UK as a genuine knowledge-sharing team. When something novel arises, and it regularly does, we have the collective knowledge and experience to address it properly.
My own client base runs from the Midlands down to the South Coast. What I see across that geography is how differently estates have evolved, and how the same tax question can have very different answers depending on local circumstances. The breadth of experience in my team is enormously valuable, for me and, ultimately, for clients.
CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
What does an exceptional client relationship look like in landed estate work? And what quality do you look for most in your team?
Empathy. You are advising people for whom land is not just an investment. It represents their family history, their obligations to the people who work and live on the estate, and their responsibility to future generations. If you approach that relationship as purely a technical exercise, you will miss most of what matters.
What I look for when building a team is genuine curiosity about a client’s situation. A real desire to understand them, not just to process information. The ability to ask the right question and most importantly, listen to the answer is what builds the trust that lets you do the difficult work well.
“Capital taxes are existential for some estates. A 40% inheritance tax liability doesn’t just reduce wealth; it can force the sale of land that has been in a family for generations. The stakes are that high.”
THE TAX LANDSCAPE
What are the issues keeping estate owners up at night right now?
Inheritance tax remains the dominant anxiety, and rightly so. At up to 40%, the exposure on a significant estate can be severe enough to force asset sales, which is precisely the outcome everyone is trying to avoid. The recent changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) have generated an enormous amount of activity. Clients who thought they had a settled position are having to reconsider their IHT planning and in many cases having to focus on succession earlier than they were anticipating.
COMMERCIAL PRESSURES
Beyond tax, what’s the wider commercial picture for rural estates? What challenges are your clients navigating day to day?
Cash flow uncertainty is a very pressing concern for many. The farming market has always been volatile, and volatility makes planning genuinely difficult. You can’t invest with confidence when the revenue picture is unstable. Layered on top of that, many of my clients with residential let property are facing sharply increasing repair and refurbishment costs, and incoming EPC requirements are creating additional pressure.
What this is driving, though, is a real acceleration in diversification. Estates are increasingly looking at alternative sources of income such as commercial property letting, holiday lets, solar battery storage, and even wind energy. There’s also a growing stream of interest in biodiversity net gain credits and other environmental markets. What were once peripheral conversations are starting to become mainstream strategic questions.
THE NEXT DECADE
Looking forward five to ten years, what will define the most successful rural estates, and the most successful advisers to them?
The estates that will thrive are those that treat this period as a structural transition rather than a cyclical bump. The withdrawal of historic subsidy regimes is permanent. The estates that adapt, building commercially resilient models with diversification, robust cash flow, and disciplined governance, will emerge stronger. Although it is probably easier said than done.
For the right owner, sustainability and natural capital are going to be of major importance. What were once values-driven projects are becoming financially quantifiable assets. Although they do require careful tax and financial planning, and the frameworks are still developing. That’s where advisers can add real value, helping clients structure these opportunities correctly from the outset.
I hope that food security will also reassert itself as a priority. After a period in which diversification away from production was often encouraged, there will be renewed emphasis on the productive capacity of the land.
One has to imagine that AI will also change farming operations, with the adoption of precision agriculture, data-led decision making, and automated processes. The estates that invest in understanding and deploying these tools will have a meaningful edge, but again, it will come at a cost, especially for early adopters, but those are the estates which may ultimately have the edge
What ties it together is governance and succession planning. Long-term complexity demands long-term thinking. The best advisory relationships in this sector are those planning fifteen or twenty years ahead, not reacting to the last Budget.
“Those estates that successfully integrate commercial strategy, tax efficiency, and stewardship will be best placed to protect and grow value across generations.”
SAFFERY AND CULTURE
You joined Saffery in 2014. What was it about the firm that attracted you, and has it lived up to that?
What struck me initially was that Saffery felt like a firm that genuinely cares about its people and about its clients.
More than a decade on, I’d say it has absolutely lived up to that impression. The quality of clients we work with is exceptional, the intellectual challenge is constant, and I work alongside colleagues who are genuinely excellent at what they do and committed to doing it properly. That matters to me, both professionally and personally.
BEYOND THE OFFICE
Three marathons completed. That’s not incidental. Is there something in the way you approach running that reflects the way you approach work?
I hadn’t quite thought about it in those terms, but perhaps. Marathon running requires a kind of disciplined long-term thinking; the hours of training to build the foundations so that on race day you know you’re not trying to win the first mile, you’re managing effort, pacing, and resilience across 26 of them. I suppose that’s not entirely dissimilar to complex long-term estate planning: at some point you see the benefit of all the earlier hard work.
As well as running, I do enjoy being out in the countryside, going on long walks with friends and family. A great deal of what we do in my group is about land, what it means to people, and why they protect it. Getting outside, walking through countryside that has been shaped by generations of stewardship, reminds me why that work matters.
David Chismon, Partner & Head of Land and Rural Estate, Saffery
CTA Chartered Tax Adviser
TEP Trust & Estate Practitioner
Durham Law LLB
E: David.chismon@saffery.com