Reform UK’s Richard Tice’s Property Firm Pays £800,000 in Dividends Despite Falling Profits – Byline Times

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A company controlled by Reform UK’s deputy leader paid out dividends of £803,228 last year, and another £359,501 this January – despite its performance appearing to falter.

Richard Tice owns, both directly and through interests connected to him, around 91% of commercial property firm Quidnet REIT. The company’s accounts make clear Tice is “the ultimate controlling party of the company by virtue of combined majority control of the ordinary share capital.”

The corporate landlord’s board paid out more than £800,000 in 2025, a year when Quidnet made a pre-tax loss of £698,710. The loss was driven by a £1.05m fall in the value of its properties.

Before that write-down, the company made about £347,000 after interest. Cash generated from operations, £557,088, was dwarfed by the dividend payout. Income from operations was also less than the interest it paid on its debt (£719,205).

Quidnet’s 2025 dividend payout was about 3.5 times its adjusted earnings of £231,076, a measure that strips out changes in the value of property and financial instruments. The company sold a property for £3.96m during 2025, which buffered some of the headline figures.

The payouts came as occupancy across Quidnet’s properties fell from 61.5% to 52.2% in a year, suggesting major headwinds for the firm.

MPs do not have to declare dividends from companies they own in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, so Byline Times has assessed the company’s accounts.

Based on 2021 shareholding figures, Byline Times estimates that around £103,000 of last year’s dividends went to Tice personally, and around £730,000 in total to Tice and interests connected to him. That far outstrips the roughly £41,000 in director’s fees Quidnet paid him in 2025, as declared in the parliamentary register.

There is no suggestion that any rules were broken, but the findings put Tice’s earnings as a commercial landlord, and the limits of the MPs’ register of interests, under the spotlight.

Tice’s team did not respond to questions about the dividends or Quidnet’s financial performance, but provided a statement on solar power.

Selling Solar

Quidnet’s latest annual report says it “continues to realise income from resale of generated energy to existing tenants and/or the grid supplier.”

The Boston and Skegness MP has been vociferous in his opposition to ground-mounted solar, opposing a raft of renewable energy projects in recent months, including in his own constituency. But Quidnet, which he controls, makes money selling electricity generated from solar at its own properties.

A spokesperson for Tice said: “Solar panels on roofs make sense. Covering productive farmland with huge solar farms does not.

“We should be making much better use of rooftops, warehouses and brownfield land before sacrificing agricultural land.

“Food security matters. Energy security matters. We should not cover Britain’s best farmland in solar panels simply to satisfy arbitrary net stupid zero targets. That distinction is perfectly clear.”

Quidnet’s 2021 accounts said it had ordered some 550 solar panels for the roof of its property in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, with the electricity to be sold to the occupiers, saving a forecast 70 tonnes of CO2 a year.

Most solar farms are on land leased from farmers, who receive rent from the developers. In a 2022 submission to Parliament, the National Farmers’ Union said: “Renewable energy production is a core part of the NFU’s net zero plan, and solar projects often offer a good diversification option for farmers.” The farming body called for “a balance between food security and climate ambitions”, and encouraged large-scale solar farms to be located on “lower quality agricultural land”.

Reform and Renewables

Nigel Farage’s party has declared war on renewable energy firms. At a press conference earlier this month, Reform UK announced it would try to prevent solar farms from connecting to the national grid. The party has previously written to energy bosses effectively trying to deter them from investing in the UK.

According to the BBC, Tice said at the 2 October event: “My message to these overseas investors, caveat emptor [buyer beware]: you might lose all your dough, think very seriously about this.”

The news outlet DeSmog has previously reported that Reform took over £2.3 million in donations from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers between 2019 and 2024, amounting to 92% of their funding during this period.

Richard Tice has also argued that it is “absolute garbage” to claim that human activity is the main cause of climate change. A 2021 Cornell study found that more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans.

The Reform deputy leader’s own constituency is one of the most climate-vulnerable areas in the UK.

Tice wrote in a 2022 report for Quidnet that the firm’s investments in rooftop solar provide “an attractive return for shareholders” and “will save hundreds of tonnes of CO2 every year.”

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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

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