FARMER Andrew Stoddart has been given a two month reprieve after a settlement was agreed with the Colstoun Trust.

Mr Stoddart, was due to be evicted from Colstoun Mains Farm, outside Haddington, after 20 years of building a business a home there, on Saturday.

However he has said the Trust is allowing him and his family to stay until January after an agreement over compensation was reached.

In a case that focused public attention on the fate of tenant farmers, Mr Stoddart was told to vacate the farm and offered what he described as minimal compensation despite having invested an estimated £500,000 in it.

As well as losing his business he, his wife and three young children and two employees and their families are also losing their homes.

Mr Stoddart said he had agreed a settlement with the Trust to "protect my family from further anxiety" and that the extended period of occupancy would allow him to remove his animals and dispose of equipment to better advantage

He said: “After 22 years, against considerable odds, I have left this farm better than I found it. It has been a hard struggle at times, and I want to pay tribute to my wife, Claire, who has shared the burden with me.

"We probably should have left many years ago when difficulties with the landlords began, but we never suspected it would end like this.

“The laws which allow landlords to arbitrarily end tenancies in order to access farming subsidies directly need amended. All we ever wanted was just to farm this place and bring up our girls in this community which we love.”

Mr Stoddart thanked his “loyal employees” who have stuck by him throughout the extended legal battle, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association and land reformers who have campaigned on his behalf, with a series of protests at the Holyrood parliament and a petition gathering tens of thousands of signatures.

He added: “We will leave East Lothian with many happy memories, on our way to a new beginning as yet unknown.”

East Lothian MSP Iain Gray raised Mr Stoddart's plight in Scottish Parliament earlier this week, calling on the Scottish Government to intervene.

Minister Richard Lochead has been involved in trying to broker negotations and find a new farm for the Stoddarts to move to and start again.