A 78-YEAR-old Preston farmer has been given six weeks to quit the farm he has called home for more than 40 years, after a High Court ruling.

Joseph Taylor has lived and worked at Pollards Farm, Howick Cross Lane, Penwortham, since 1962.

But Lancashire Council Council (LCC), owners of the farm's freehold, claimed he had broken the terms of his tenancy agreement and launched a High Court bid to evict him.

They claimed Mr Taylor has been illegally "trespassing" on the farm since March 27, 1998, when they "terminated" his tenancy.

Yesterday (Wednesday) Mr Justice Stanley Burnton, sitting in London's High Court, ruled in the authority's favour, leaving Mr Taylor facing eviction and a £50,000-plus legal costs bill.

During the week-long trial, Paul Morgan QC for LCC, told the judge the authority had agreed to Mr Taylor's tenancy in the 1960s on the basis that he was to run a farm as an agricultural holding.

But, Mr Morgan claimed, it came to their attention during the mid-1990s that he was in fact running a "business" importing milk and fruit juice before processing them for resale. It was then after several warnings, said Mr Morgan, that LCC served Mr Taylor with notices to quit, resulting in him becoming a "trespasser" on the termination of his tenancy in March 1998.

Hugh Mercer, for Mr Taylor, tried to persuade the judge the procedures followed by LCC in terminating Mr Taylor's tenancy, under the 1986 Agricultural Holdings Act, breached the European Convention on Human Rights, and made him a victim of unfair "discrimination".

Mr Justice Stanley Burnton disagreed saying: "From the inception of his tenancy and at all times thereafter until its termination, his rights have always been the same as those of every other tenant of an agricultural holding."