Lay of the land: SCDC’s response to the Scottish Government’s ‘Land reform in a net-zero Scotland’ consultation
/SCDC recently submitted a response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on land reform, ‘Land reform in a net-zero Scotland’.
The consultation is part of the groundwork for the next Land Reform Bill which was committed to in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-22. The aim of this Bill is to address the concentration of landownership in Scotland.
We have set out some of the consultation’s key proposals along with what we said in our response.
Proposal: Strengthening the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, including an enforceable duty for large-scale landowners to comply with this.
What we said
We agreed with this proposal. In general, we have observed that community-oriented legislation that is legally enforceable or where appeals can be made, such as equalities and human rights legislation and community asset transfer, is taken more seriously and has led to more positive outcomes than legislation which isn’t, such as participation requests and the Fairer Scotland Duty.
Proposal: Making it compulsory for large-scale landholders to develop Land Management Plans, demonstrating how land will be used to contribute to net zero and how communities will be engaged with around decisions relating to land.
What we said
We agreed, since this will increase the likelihood that landowners consider the impact of their land management on communities and the environment in an accountable and transparent way. It will also be an opportunity for landowners to engage proactively with communities at an early stage of planning.
We added that we would like to see, as part of this, a requirement for landowners to identify which other local plans have been, or are being, developed when preparing their management plans. In particular, there shoud be a reference to local plans led by communities. Examples include community action plans, local place plans and any community-led plans or surveys relating to housing, the environment and other community priorities.
Proposal: A public interest test on transfers of particularly large-scale land holdings, with pre-emption in favour of community buy-out where the public interest test applies, and where it is appropriate to do so.
What we said
Again, we agreed. This type of approach to regulation of land and other transactions will make an essential contribution to meeting ambitions around net zero and also addressing other issues such as mitigating the effects of climate change (or climate adaptation), lack of housing, social care issues and depopulation.
Some other key points
We emphasised the importance of community use or tenure of land, in addition to ownership. We also stressed that, in addition to contributing to net zero, land reform should consider the sustainability of local communities, including housing and employment.
In line with other organisations such as Community Land Scotland (CLS), we felt that the proposed criteria for classifying landholdings as large-scale needed revising. For instance, we supported CLS’s recommendation that the fixed threshold for large-scale landholdings should be greatly reduced to 500 hectares. In our experience, it is mostly the control of small pieces of land or buildings that make the difference to whether community groups, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, achieve their aims in relation to land and buildings.
The consultation also asked whether the proposals should be applied to the urban context. We said that they should, since land reform is increasingly being seen as an urban issue as well as a rural one. Urban communities are at least as likely as rural communities to seek to influence change in these areas, and many of the proposals would apply to the urban context as much as they do to the rural context.
Another question in the consultation concerned the future role of taxation in supporting land reform. We said that there should be increased use of deliberative democracy to inform tax policy in relation to land reform and other issues, including national-level citizens assemblies as well as smaller citizens panels.
More information
Our full response with our thoughts on some of the other proposals in the consultation, can be found here. Click to download as a pdf.
See more on land and buidlings, including guides and links to legislation and useful contacts on Communities Channel Scotland. Click here (external website)
Our consultation response was based on our rich and varied work and conversations with community groups and partner organisations throughout Scotland. Please get in touch to discuss any of the issues involved and to help inform any future consultation responses. Contact Andrew Paterson at SCDC.
