Land Reform Bill to diversify ownership introduced at Holyrood

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.

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.”