FAMILY FARM AT CENTRE OF £10M DISPUTE

WHEN a couple bought a small farm almost 70 years ago they could not have predicted that it might one day be worth over £10m.

Ernest and Gladys Tamplin bought 12.3-acre Panteg Farm, Lisvane, in 1951, and died in the 1980s, unaware that their land situated between Cardiff and Caerphilly could be a pot of gold.

The farm near the M4 is being targeted for development by housing giants, Redrow – but is now the focus of a bitter legal row between the couple’s descendants.

When Gladys died in 1988, three years after her husband, the farm was left in trust for the couple’s six children, the High Court heard.

Edward Tamplin and Jane Wayne are now the sole survivors of the six and they, along with Edward’s son Mark Tamplin, hold the land as trustees.

Judge Paul Matthews said that sale options had been agreed with Redrow and he had been told the land “may have a value in excess of £10m”.

But three of Ernest and Gladys’ grandchildren – brothers Hugh and Rhys Lewis and Sadie Lougher – are also entitled to benefit from the trust.

And they took the trustees – Edward, Jane and Mark – to court, expressing “suspicions” that they are being given a raw deal.

Edward, Jane and Mark insist there are “perfectly proper and innocent explanations” for everything that has been done with the land.

But Judge Matthews ruled that the grandchildren had raised “ample grounds” for “exciting the suspicion of the court”.

Edward, Jane and Mark were ordered to disclose to the grandchildren a raft of documents concerning their dealings with the trust property.

The judge said the trustees had taken “an extreme and in my judgement indefensible approach to disclosure in this case”.

They had initially denied, “on a very weak basis”, that Hugh, Rhys and Sadie were entitled to anything at all from the trust.

Had they taken a “less confrontational and more co-operative approach at the outset”, the legal dispute may well have been avoided, he added.

But, by “putting forward a series of hopeless arguments”, the trustees had “brought it upon themselves, and must take the consequences”.

Hugh and Rhys are the sons of Lorna Lewis, Gladys and Ernest’s daughter who died in 2008.

And Sadie’s father, Robert Tamplin, was also one of the couple’s six children. He died in 2013.

The judge said of the land: “It is potentially developable, and I have been told that, as such, it may have a value in excess of £10m.

“Options have twice been granted by the trustees to potential developers (Redrow), and may be granted again in the near future.”

Hugh, Rhys and Sadie were concerned that distributions of money had been made to other beneficiaries of the trust, but not to them.

They also wanted to check that the option agreements had been “prudently entered into” and whether the land has been generating any income.

Although they had recently been provided with trust accounts, they claimed they were being excluded from reports and updates.

And they suspected that the trustees were “failing to act impartially and fairly between the beneficiaries”.

For their part, Edward, Jane and Mark claimed the grandchildren were engaged in “a fishing expedition aimed at finding ammunition” to use against them.

Emphasising that none of the allegations had been proved against the trustees, the judge said: “Of course, there may be perfectly proper and innocent explanations for all of them.”

But, ordering the trustees to disclose documents to Hugh, Rhys and Sadie, he added: “These are all matters which, in my judgement, must excite the suspicion of the court.”

The grandchildren, as beneficiaries, had the “right to hold trustees to account for their stewardship of the trust fund” and “were entitled to know” what had been done with the land.