Co-op land sale may top £150m as rural values in Britain rise sharply

Financial difficulties may have helped to push Britain’s Co-operative Group into selling its farmland in England and Scotland, but the market timing could not be better for one of the biggest UK land sales in recent decades.

While London property prices have grabbed all the headlines, in rural Britain valuations for prime land have shot up at double the pace of prime residential property in the capital in the past decade, as a lack of supply and strong investor demand have combined to create a windfall for farmers looking to sell.

With its 17,808 acres — equivalent to more than 10,000 football pitches and almost 13% of the 139,000 acres sold in Britain on the open market in 2013 — the Co-operative’s sale could run to hundreds of millions of pounds.