A landowners' group is lobbying Suffolk's MPs ahead of the October 30 Autumn Budget to try to ensure that rural businesses aren't targeted for crippling tax rises.

Cath Crowther - who heads up Country Land and Business Association (CLA) East - is fearful that  agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR) could be among the areas targeted by chancellor Rachel Reeves next week.

Ms Crowther - who recently returned from maternity leave - has been working behind the scenes to get to know a largely new cohort of MPs across East Anglia following the July 4 general election.

The CLA has warned that scrapping inheritance tax reliefs could destroy family farms and hit UK food production.

Ms Crowther has been lobbying instead for measures to help grow the rural economy - seen as an under-performing area of the economy.

Grants to help boost sustainable growth and productivity such as new reservoirs to provide secure irrigation water should be topping the agenda, she suggests. Planning "horror stories" among members also abound.

"The rural economy is 18% less productive than the average. That could be worth £43bn (in England) if it was brought into line. That's really exciting. That could go into the rural economy," she says.

"What we need to see is the changes that help unleash that rural economy and see the barriers members are facing reduce so we can deliver more."

CLA East moved from its old home at Kentford, near Newmarket, to a building on the Marquis of Stafford's 1,600ha Stetchworth Estate on the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border two years ago.

Ms Crowther officially returned to work this month. While taking time off to have her second daughter, Evie, 10 months, who joins sister Lily, four, she has kept up with policy changes and is keen to bring the rural agenda to the fore with the region's new batch of law-makers. 

"I'm a farmer's daughter and I'm genuinely interested in all the topics we cover and in this role I could never fully switch off so I have been reading all the policy papers and I have been along to meetings and been to shows," she says.

She met candidates ahead of the election and has been acquainting new MPs with the CLA's rural agenda. "It's an opportunity because they are listening and a lot of the new MPs we are meeting with want to learn," she says. 

The Renters' Rights Bill is among the new policies she has been discussing with them. She wants to ensure that her rural landlord members who are "genuinely good landlords" aren't penalised as a result of a desire to go after rogue operators.

"A lot of renters have been there for 20 years," she says. "If actually the landlords have no rights we risk those properties being sold off."

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) is another area which is more difficult for landowners with ancient buildings not built to modern specifications. "We need the methodology to be reviewed," she says.

She and the team have been taking MPs out onto farms and estates to meet members and show them the issues first hand - as well as providing them with briefing notes.

"We also have members who are organising meetings because they want to touch base with their new MPs. They will know the issues they are facing but we have all the facts and figures behind us," she says. "We are very much an evidence-based organisation."

The CLA has calculated that for an average family farm of 215 acres, the removal of reliefs would mean 40% of the farm’s land would need to be sold to fund inheritance tax liabilities.

In its own poll of 500 farmers and landowners 86% of respondents said the removal of reliefs would mean it was "likely" that all or some of their land would have been sold on their death.

“If the government rips the rug from under hard-working farmers by removing these reliefs, it would be a catastrophic betrayal," says Ms Crowther.

“If 5% of farms have to sell at their next point of inheritance, 27,000 holdings face going out of business.

“In many cases it would be the end of the family farm and a hollowing out of rural communities, stifling rural entrepreneurialism."

Speculation has been growing about what areas will be targeted ahead of the Budget - which will occur nearly four months after Labour took power.

"We have been warned over and over again this is going to be a tough Budget and there are going to be cuts in lots of places. Because of that inheritance tax could be looked at. That could result in the selling off of many, many farming businesses," she says.

"If it (reliefs) was scrapped we could well see a lot of corporates coming in with no worries about inheritance tax."

Instead, "what we just need is certainty going forward and a settled period," she says.