A zoo owner must sell his £2.75 million tourist destination, featuring zebras and American bison, because of Rachel Reeves’ changes to the inheritance tax.
Steve Cardell built Cassiobury Farm on a derelict site in Watford, transforming a former tip into a 15-acre zoo, fishery and conservation project.
The site is home to more than 70 exotic species such as two rare Australian alpine dingoes, honey badgers, and giant Galapagos tortoises.
The retired IT executive is selling instead of passing it on to his children due to Labour’s inheritance tax decisions, which eliminate exemptions for farms and small businesses.
Were 55-year-old Mr Cardell and his wife Katie not to sell up, the couple would face a potential seven-figure tax bill.
Cassiobury operates non-profit, with its £250,000 yearly expenses financed by ticket sales, fishing, and a farm shop, and any extra funds supporting projects overseas, such as rhino orphanages in South Africa and sloth rehabilitation in Costa Rica.
He explained: ‘We always expected to use either the family farm or small business inheritance tax exemption, but Rachel Reeves has removed both of those options.’
‘Now we have a potential seven-figure inheritance tax bill, so that is what started the thought process.’
The site is home to more than 70 exotic species such as two rare Australian alpine dingoes, honey badgers, and giant Galapagos tortoises
Steve Cardell built Cassiobury Farm on a derelict site in Watford, transforming a former tip into a 15-acre zoo, fishery and conservation project
The couple bought the site for about £400,000 in 2009, which he described as ‘peanuts’ when it was little more than a toxic dump.
According to Mr Cardell, it had become a landfill and a drug den, having previously been a watercress farm and lay abandoned since the 1960s.
A significant clean-up was necessary to clear two thousand needles, asbestos sheets, and even human waste from the field before any development could start.
‘You never saw birds or animals on it. The land was dead,’ Mr Cardell told The Times.
The clean-up took two years, followed by five more years to set up infrastructure like fencing, power and water systems, roads, and bridges.
His drive to protect wildlife was born as a teenager on safari in South Africa. Sitting in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi game reserve, listening to guides talk about poaching and habitat loss, he made himself a promise: one day he’d help make a difference.
That vow had roots in his family history. His grandparents grew up on a Hull council estate before his grandfather joined the RAF in the Second World War before later moving abroad to work for the British and Commonwealth Office in Rhodesia, where Mr Cardell’s mother was born.
Years later, living near Cassiobury Park in North Watford he heard about a run-down farm just a short drive from home.
The forgotten site reignited the teenage dream he’d carried for decades.
After buying the land he began the painstaking task of clearing it.
Winning planning permission on the green-belt plot took six years, but it eventually became home to a three-bed house for his son’s family and the foundations of his conservation project.
The exotic zoo boasts of a range of animals including capybaras, which are native to South America
The zoo boasts of American bison, which Mr Cardell believes to be the only herd in the UK
The growth in animals started progressively and with the help of his friend Ashley Palmier who used to run a small zoo.
‘He would come down and say, ‘You should get a couple of wallabies to just, like, run around with the deer.”
What began as a hobby quickly grew into something much bigger as he admits he questioned whether keeping exotic animals was the right thing to do, until the pandemic forced the closure of a friend’s zoo.
Together, they launched the Ventura Wildlife Foundation, turning the collection into a conservation charity. The site now houses species bred for rewilding and international preservation projects.
Although Mr Cardell prefers the zebras, the red pandas and capybaras are the undeniable stars for visiting families and schools, drawing up queues on public open days, held six times a year.
The farm today is home to more than 70 exotic species, from Galapagos tortoises to what Cardell calls ‘insanely aggressive’ honey badgers, alongside ten rare farm breeds such as Soay sheep and alpacas.
Visitors may see it as a ‘nice day out’, but Cardell insists the real mission is to ‘make a contribution to conservation’.
The site runs on a small team of five staff, a network of volunteers, and the hands-on work of his son, a builder who lives on site. His daughter-in-law has even turned the family home’s ground floor into a yoga studio and wellbeing retreat.
Now, though, Mr Cardell is preparing to sell and he blames Labour’s inheritance tax shake-up and says his children, now in their late twenties, have no interest in taking it on.
He said: ‘Then we had to think about my kids, who were 11 and 13 when we bought this place. They’re now 26 and 28. They have their own lives. They’ve been designed to do different things, so neither of them would want it.
The farm also has some new additions such as baby rabbit nursery which children love
The site runs on a small team of five staff, a network of volunteers, and the hands-on work of his son, a builder who lives on site
‘And the final reason is that the place is in its best state ever financially, collection wise, site-wise. I’d rather sell it when it’s in great shape.’
The £2.75million listing, with Knight Frank, includes the three-bedroom house, lodge, greenhouses, animal enclosures and canal-side moorings.
As Mr Cardell awaits a buyer, he admits his sights are already set on his next project: restoring a ten-bedroom Elizabethan manor house.
