Reforms seeking to diversify land ownership in rural and island communities has been put before Holyrood.
The Scottish Government’s Land Reform Bill looks to introduce a raft of protections which crack down on large land ownership.
The Bill, introduced to Parliament on Thursday, includes measures that will apply to large landholdings of more than 1,000 hectares and prohibits certain sales until ministers can consider the impact on local communities.
It could require owners to break up the sale into smaller parts to help communities thrive.
The plans also aim to help community ownership of land by requiring advanced notice of sales involving more than 1,000 hectares.
READ MORE: Calls for Matheson to resign as parliament finds he breached MSP code of conduct
Legal responsibilities will also be placed on owners of the largest landholdings, requiring them to show how they use the land and how it contributes to key policies such as climate change.
Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon said: “We do not think it is right that ownership and control of much of Scotland’s land is still in the hands of relatively few people. We want Scotland to have a strong and dynamic relationship between its land and people.
“We want to be a nation where rights and responsibilities in relation to land and its natural capital are fully recognised and fulfilled. That was our aim in 2016 and it remains our aim today.
“This Bill sets out ambitious proposals to allow the benefits and opportunities of Scotland’s land to be more widely shared.
“Too often, people and communities feel powerless when the land they live on is sold with no prior warning – this Bill will help to change that.
“We will introduce measures so that more communities are being given information and the opportunity to take ownership before sales from landholdings over 1,000 hectares.
“Crucially, when one of these landholdings is being sold, we want Government to have the power to step in and require that it be sold in smaller parcels to different people if that will help to make local populations and communities more sustainable.”
Scottish Green rural affairs spokeswoman Ariane Burgess said: “At its heart, land reform is about addressing inequality. From our cities to our countryside and from our hills to our rivers and our iconic coastlines, huge swathes of our country are owned by a very small number of wealthy people.
“Scotland had benefited from a community right-to-buy for over 20 years, but one of the biggest barriers to community ownership is the huge size of many of Scotland’s estates.
“That’s why it’s so important that this Bill includes powers to break up big estates that come up for sale into smaller plots. This will make community ownership a far more viable option for many communities.”
But Sarah-Jane Laing, chief executive of Scottish Land and Estates, said the Bill is “destructive and disproportionate”.
She said: Rather than taking a common-sense approach to reflect the challenges that people living and working in rural Scotland face, Scottish ministers are pursuing a destructive and disproportionate agenda against land-based businesses.
“Some of the measures signal a huge U-turn by ministers from utilising land to pursue net-zero towards a full-on attack on the property rights of large farms and estates.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel