Progress, Challenges, and the Journey Ahead for Scotland's Land Reform

This month I enjoyed being part of a conference in Aberdeen celebrating 50 years of land economy teaching at the University of Aberdeen. As a graduate from 1999, it prompted a few reflections beyond immediate horizons.

One is simply the realisation that my time as a student there was halfway through the 50 years now being marked, which puts it firmly in the receding mists of time.

Another is what has changed, and what hasn’t, in Scotland’s land over those 25 years. For me, beginning a career in the land sector in 1999 felt an exciting time. With a new Scottish Parliament lots of things felt possible and indeed land reform had come firmly on to the agenda.

In that final year of university, a group of us enthused students invited Lord Sewel to come and talk about the work of the Land Reform Policy Group he was then chairing to shape the first of Scotland’s Land Reform Acts. I still have that group’s publications on my shelf and find that I have reached for them again in recent weeks as we advise on the current land reform bill.

Looking back, there have been some notable shifts since those early days. The growth of community land ownership has been central. Transformative for many communities, it has also embedded community empowerment as a distinctive theme in Scottish land reform.   

We’ve seen a shift in how we frame the public interest in land, a change formalised in Scotland’s Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement (LRRS). The LRRS, a first of its kind statement agreed by Parliament, sets out principles for the relationship between people and land. It is both a powerful framing underpinned by human rights and a practical reference point influencing land management practice.

For example, community engagement is now embraced by many land owners across all sectors as a standard part of responsible land ownership. The Scottish Land Commission’s Good Practice Programme supports landowners, managers, and communities to put into practice the principles of the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, and that support remains in high demand.

Reflecting on these shifts at the Aberdeen conference I also touched on some of the challenges that either remain or have emerged, and which are on our radar as a Commission. Community ownership may now be well established, but extending beyond the current 3% of Scotland seems likely to need fresh reforms to the way acquisitions are financed, to community rights to buy and to the role of public land owners in enabling community ownership.

Beyond community ownership we have yet to significantly open up opportunities for individuals to own or use small scale land holdings. Our work on governance models, together with the future development of crofting, starts to explore a more active approach to repopulation, housing and economic resilience.

Emerging natural capital value, though developing slower than some hoped and others feared, still demands that we plan now for how this value is harnessed for public and community good. Recently we published research looking at lessons from international experience in natural resource governance, particularly in ways that financial value and decision-making support local economies and communities.

We continue, of course, to advise on the Scottish Government’s current land reform bill to inform Parliament’s ongoing consideration. The bill’s focus on regulating large land holdings in the public interest is a significant step. The Commission supports the intent of the bill. We also think there are ways it could be simplified and strengthened and we will continue to offer advice on this as Parliament’s consideration progresses.

The constancy of land reform as an ambition with broad support in the Scottish Parliament over 25 years has been striking. Whilst some say that land reform should surely be done by now, others say the process has barely started. I am in no doubt there is still a big job to do and it is one to which the Scottish Land Commission is firmly committed. Reflecting on the changes since my days as a land economy student is both a reminder of how much has evolved and a motivation to shape further change.

Land reform is often described as a journey and of course even the longest journeys have an end point. We now need to bring the destination of the land reform journey – what a ‘land reformed’ Scotland looks like – into sharper focus. Developing a more settled sense of the route needed to complete it would benefit all interests in Scotland’s land.