All eyes will be on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, next month. The Autumn Budget 2025 has been looming, with many in rural communities waiting nervously to see what the government will come up with. Last year saw the announcement of the disastrous Family Farm Tax, which threatens doom for small farms and the families that work on them. What could the Treasury have in store for the countryside this year?

Rumours have swirled for several weeks about the contents of this year's Budget. Far from proving helpful, the uncertainty created by many of these stories has confused and, even worse, created a false illusion of hope for some.  It would be unprofitable to try to prophesy about next month's announcements. What all can agree on, however, is that working people in rural communities are worried about tax levels.

Rural people should be protected from unjustly disproportionate burdens. Accordingly, the Countryside Alliance has written to the Chancellor, urging her to take ten key measures that we believe are of the utmost importance to rural communities across the country. While there are several areas of rural life that we believe would benefit from new or increased government investment, our priorities focus on broader fiscal policy and tax.

As spearheads of the campaign against the Family Farm Tax our letter renewed our call for an urgent re-think. We also reiterated our warning against introducing a vehicle weight tax, following our earlier letter to the Chancellor when a campaign for it by a Brussels-based think tank emerged in September.

In all, we have urged Rachel Reeves to take the following ten measures:

• Do not implement reforms to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief from inheritance as announced in the last Budget. Re-think the proposals and undertake genuine consultation with rural stakeholders on alternatives that fulfil the policy objective of preventing agricultural property from being as a tax shield without compromising the inter-generational sustainability of family farms.
• Reintroduce rural proofing in fiscal policy decisions, requiring specific rural impacts to have been identified, assessed and accounted for before Treasury-led policies are implemented.
• Maintain the plan announced in the 2024 Budget to introduce permanently lower business rates multipliers for high street retail, hospitality and leisure properties from 2026-27, designed in close consultation with businesses.
• Help protect rural pubs by extending the alcohol duty rate cut announced in the 2024 Budget to non-draught alcoholic drinks.
• Do not raise the remote betting duty on horseracing to the same level as on gambling with online casinos; begin a process of reforming the Horserace Betting Levy in consultation with the sector.
• Use powers returned to the UK following its departure from the EU to reduce the VAT rate on domestic heating oil to zero, in view of the reliance on the fuel in rural areas; cut the VAT rate payable by rural businesses that use it from the current non-domestic rate of 20%.
• Recognising the requirement many rural dwellers face to take more, longer journeys by private transport than their urban counterparts, maintain fuel duty at current rates by making the 5p cut, first introduced in March 2022 ostensibly as a temporary measure, permanent.
• Do not compromise farmers’ access to reduced-duty red diesel.
• Do not introduce a vehicle purchase tax levied at a higher rate for heavier vehicles, as such a policy would discriminate against vulnerable rural dwellers and businesses that rely on larger vehicles.
• Assure rural communities that their need for longer journeys and greater reliance on private transport will be considered and reflected in any future proposal for a pay-per-mile road tax.
  

Time will tell whether these requests will fall on deaf ears or not. While we sincerely hope that the Treasury will listen to the voice of the countryside, many in rural communities will doubtless feel that, all too often, their concerns and pleas have been neglected and ignored by the government. 

On 26 November, all will be revealed by Ms Reeves. She would do well to consider the plight of rural people before then.