Celebrating the Launch of Scotland’s Vacant and Derelict Land Hub

David reflects on the launch of the Scottish Government’s VDL Hub and what this might mean for progress with land re-use and reducing inequality.  The launch of the Hub comes during our review of progress with re-use of vacant land.

What is VDL and Why Does It Matter?

Vacant and Derelict Land (VDL) is land that is unused for its intended purpose or that is too damaged to be used without repair.  Our industrial past means that Scotland has a significant legacy of vacant and derelict sites stemming from our rapid transition to a service based economy in the 1980s.

The existence of VDL matters.  It can cause physical and psychological harm to communities.  It is also a missed opportunity to use land productively, for a range of uses. While there has been positive progress in recent years, VDL remains a significant issue. Half of Scotland’s population lives within 1000 metres of vacant land.  The figure is much higher in low income areas – in 2021, 49% of Scotland’s total vacant and derelict land was located within the 15% most deprived areas of Glasgow. 

Previous Work on VDL Re-use – the Taskforce

The Vacant and Derelict Land Taskforce brought together experts to examine the challenges and opportunities presented by Scotland’s VDL.  In 2020 the Taskforce published recommendations to reduce VDL, tackle long-term blight and move to a system of land reuse.  These included changes to funding greater policy alignment and emphasising responsible stewardship of land and property.

The first recommendation was about making better use of data to support land use decisions – with a call for an online searchable map of VDL sites:

“This should be presented in an accessible and engaging way and linked to information about funding sources and reuse potential to help promote investment opportunities to commercial, philanthropic and social impact investors.” – Recommendations from the Vacant and Derelict Land Taskforce, 2020.

The creation of the hub is an extremely important step in reducing vacant and derelict land – it will provide a vital resource for people with an interest in finding positive re-uses for sites.  It builds on and expands previous work by the Commission to map and provide ownership details of long term, difficult to use VDL sites in order to focus on the problems and provide site and ownership information to help support re-use.

The Hub – What it Does and Where it is Hosted? 

The VDL Hub is hosted on the Scottish Government’s Our Place website.  The site provides information and resources to help people who want to improve places, bringing health benefits and quality of life. 

The main VDL resource is an online, open access searchable map of all the registered VDL sites in Scotland.  This means that anyone with an interest in a site or a particular area can search details of vacant and derelict sites.  It provides greater transparency on the location of sites and opens up their potential for re-use by communities, individuals or developers.

The VDL Hub provides a significant resource in supporting positive land re-use by highlighting the challenge and extent of VDL and providing a resource to help support re-use. In time I hope that it can be linked to practical tools (such as the Community Route Map and ToolKit developed by the Commission) to provide a one stop shop of resources and support for people looking to re-use sites. There may also be scope for future expansion to cover smaller sites (those under 0.1 hectares are not on the register) and to link to the buildings at risk register.

Meanwhile, the hub already increases the visibility of vacant land and the opportunities for re-use – communities looking for sites to develop can search the map, while there is potential for VDL sites to be deliberately targeted for re-use in Local Development Plans.

One such resource is the Ownerless Land Property Transfer Scheme run by an organisation called the King’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. The ownerless property transfer scheme, which will be a subject of a future blog, provides a route to productive ownership of derelict properties. 

What Next? 

The Ownerless Land Property Transfer scheme and the Vacant and Derelict Land hub (both Task Force recommendations) come at an opportune time for the Commission.

It is now four years since the Taskforce recommendations were published.  Since then, policy in Scotland increasingly, promotes land re-use – for example Scotland’s National Planning Framework, NPF4, aims to deliver net zero and shift development from green field sites to land and building re-use.

We are reviewing progress on the VDL Taskforce’s recommendations and this September, we plan to publish research by Ryden which updates the position on vacant and derelict land re-use in Scotland. This will review progress with land re-use, explore funding and policy support and provide illustrative case studies of re-use for greenspace and housing.  We will also highlight areas where more work is required with the aim of starting a positive debate on how to accelerate land re-use to improve local places and deliver net zero.