Estate Matters Episode 19: Charlie and Beilby Forbes Adam | Lessons in Succession

Handing over control of the Escrick Park Estate in Yorkshire to his son, Beilby, was “quite a challenge,” Charlie Forbes Adam admits in the latest Estate Matters podcast from KOR Communications.

“The first year I found really difficult to be honest,” Charlie tells podcast host Anna Byles. “I put my life and soul into the place for 32 years.”

But the transition from father to son, completed when Charlie was 64 and his son in his mid-30s, has been a success – in large part because Charlie was happy to step back from day-to-day control while continuing to offer advice and support when needed.

Both Beilby and Charlie agree that good communication at all levels has been the key to managing the North Yorkshire rural business, which includes residential and commercial property, a 2,500 acre in-hand farm, a holiday park and a forestry operation.

That communication includes the way father and son stay in touch, including regular working lunches at a local café every couple of months to discuss issues. Beilby adds: “Succession is made easier by getting along – and we do!”

Describing his own experience of the handover, he says: “I think Dad has been amazing and, as he says, has stepped back and allowed me to come and do my thing whilst always being there at the end of the phone and happy to give guidance and offer advice.

“That’s been incredibly helpful and confidence-building and very much unlike, I think, a lot of other farms and estates where the older generation can keep hanging on until the very last days and at that point their children are slightly prohibited in taking the business in the direction they want.”

In his 20s and early 30s Beilby gained experience away from Escrick Park, training as a land surveyor, but it had always been his intention to come home and run the Estate. He said both he and his father agreed time away, gaining life experiences, was important.

Now he is at the helm he is continuing to diversify the business, something his father started and which he is pursuing, with a fresh eye on the best way to maintain the sustainability of the Estate, for the benefit of everyone involved with it.

That includes progressing with plans for the new community of Heronby, on Estate land near Escrick, designed to deliver a total of 4,000 homes and all amenities. The garden village, originally proposed when Charlie was running the Estate, aims to meet local housing need. Councillors currently have the plan on hold.

Beilby is keen to pursue the proposal to do the right thing by Escrick Park, the local area and the community. “Rather than leave an enormous PLC legacy, I would rather work with SMEs to bring forward something really special and for that to be my legacy,” he tells the podcast.

There are challenges in running a rural estate at the moment, Beilby says, especially with the current pressure on farm incomes. Many of the issues were concerns for his father too, more than 30 years ago, and Charlie says he had to diversify away from parts of the farming operation in the early 1990s to put the Estate on a firmer footing. “It was diversify or die,” he adds.

Beilby says many of those same challenges remain. “Farming continues to make very little money, if any, as does forestry. Residential period property portfolios are increasingly challenging as EPC requirements increase. We’re seeing the same with some of our commercial properties and it’s not quite such a buoyant market as it was pre-Covid, certainly around us – and they are some of our core income streams.”

He says Estates are facing these challenges against a very different communications landscape compared to the one his father had to deal with. Charlie describes using local newspapers and magazine advertisements to attract new tenants and new business, while information could be filtered out to the local community through press releases sent to the local newspaper.

Beilby is negotiating the world of social media and the opportunity, via the Estate website, to take messages directly to stakeholders and neighbours, supported by communications specialists, like KOR. 

He says: “You can’t just pop out a press release and then forget about it – social media creates a different way of providing feedback on projects and people can often be quite articulate and quite emotionally impassioned, particularly about certain renewable schemes and housing.”

But he suggests communications are most successful when people affected by changes on the Estate get plenty of warning. “Where we have communicated well and where it’s been really successful is just by letting people know in advance,” he says.

“That’s been a key learning lesson for me – don’t spring things on people, give them a lot of warning and try to explain as best you can.”

Both father and son agree that rural Estates, including Escrick Park, ought to be more comfortable with talking about the good work they do in their communities – very often unpaid – but which often goes under the radar.

As to the future, Beilby sums it up: “I would hope that the Estate can be an incredibly well-recognised bastion of its conservation work; I would hope that that we will continue producing some high quality vegetables and I would hope that we have demonstrated that we can continue to grow through other means including renewable energy and new developments, but in a sensitive way that respects the history and the surroundings.”