BCP Council wants about £1m for Hicks Farm in Throop: a listed farmhouse from about 1800 and its barns. The house and the old brick barns must stay.

BCP Council is preparing to sell most of Hicks Farm in Throop. That includes the Grade II listed farmhouse, which dates from around 1800, and the barns and yards around it. The council expects the sale to raise about £1 million.

The farm has been empty of farming since 2014. Its outbuildings have been fenced off, boarded up or propped for about ten years, and the council now classes all of them as dangerous. The tenant of the farmhouse has a disrepair claim against the council. The council says it cannot afford the repairs.

Cabinet voted unanimously on 2 September to recommend the sale to full council. The recommendation was on the agenda for full council on 13 October. As of 19 October the council had not published minutes or a decision list from that meeting, so the vote is not yet on the record.

What is being sold

The site is in Muscliffe and Strouden Park ward, on Throop Road. The council’s Cabinet report says the farm splits naturally into three lots:

  • the farmhouse
  • a larger yard with buildings, about one acre
  • a smaller courtyard with barns

Its valuers advised that selling the lots separately could raise more than selling the farm as one. The council will keep a parcel on the west side. Its countryside team uses that land to reach the nature reserve next to the farm, and to store materials and equipment for grazing and land management.

What it is worth

The report gives three figures, and they cover different areas:

Valuation Area covered Figure
Red Book valuation, May 2026 Farmhouse and eastern parcel, with vacant possession £820,000
Early indicative valuation The whole site £1.2 million
Council’s working estimate The wider area now proposed for sale About £1 million

The council widened the sale area after the Red Book valuation, to take in all the buildings. It says that makes about £1 million “a reasonable market value”. Any sale contract would carry an overage clause. That means the council takes a share of any rise in value if a buyer later gets planning permission.

Cabinet also recommended that the money goes into a separate fund for repairing and maintaining council buildings, rather than into general spending.

Why the council is selling

The report sets out a site that has cost money and earned nothing for a decade:

  • The farmhouse. It is leased to Seascape Homes and Property, a company the council owns, which sublets it to a tenant. The tenant has made a disrepair claim. The repairs are the council’s responsibility and are estimated at more than £60,000. The house’s energy rating is E, and the certificate has expired.
  • The barns. A fire in early 2024 destroyed one barn. Health and safety problems since then have shut the rest. An insurance settlement for the burnt barn will pay for one new barn at the back of the site, for the countryside team.
  • The land. The farmland around the buildings is already a SANG, a green space the council provides to draw walkers away from protected heathland. The buildings are surplus to that.

The other option in the report was to keep the farm and pay for the repairs. The council rejected it because there is no money for the farmhouse or the outbuildings and no council use for most of the site.

What a buyer can and cannot do

This is not an easy site to develop, and the report says so. Hicks Farm sits in the Throop and Muccleshell Conservation Area, designated in 1975. It is in the Green Belt. The farm itself is in flood zone 2 for river flooding, and the land behind it, towards the Stour, is in flood zone 3, the highest risk band.

The listing, from 1976, covers the farmhouse and any building inside its curtilage built before 1948. That takes in the Victorian brick barns. The council’s own heritage planners assessed every building on the site in February 2017. Their verdict, attached to the Cabinet report:

Must be kept Can be removed
The farmhouse A flat-roofed breeze block building
The brick outhouse and laundry with its slate roof Two modern metal-framed buildings
Three brick barns and a fourth brick building, with their timber roof structures A modern timber-clad building
The original brick walls and timbers of the remaining older buildings The modern additions to those buildings, and a flat-roofed structure

The planners wrote that the poor condition of some buildings “would not be a justification for their removal”.

The valuers still think there is a market. They see scope for barn conversions and some new building, subject to planning permission, but they rate the risk as “relatively high” because of the listing and local planning policy.

What residents have asked for

The report says local residents and Throop and Holdenhurst Parish Council have asked the council to do something about the farm “over the last few years”. Earlier engagement suggested residents would support some housing on the site, and “want to see any form of improvements rather than the current derelict condition”.

What it means for you

  • Nothing is for sale yet. The council has not published marketing details, an agent or a sale date. Any buyer will need planning permission and listed building consent for any change, and Throop residents can comment on those applications on the BCP planning register. Our Bournemouth planning news page explains how.
  • The sale is of the farmhouse and farm buildings, not the SANG fields. The council is also keeping the western parcel so its countryside team can keep reaching the reserve and the SANG.
  • The old buildings must stay. Whoever buys Hicks Farm inherits the farmhouse, the outhouse and the old brick barns, and their repair bills.
  • For the full council outcome, check the 13 October meeting page. We will update this story when the council publishes the decision.

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