Who Owns Mid-Scotland and Fife?

Richard Leonard (1989)
Labour Party European Office, Inverkeithing, Fife

Printer friendly version - 152Kb doc,  295Kb pdf

Based on research carried out in the late 1980s Richard Leonard examines the land ownership pattern in the European constituency of Mid-Scotland and Fife.

The constituency comprises the whole of Fife and Central Regions and the Perth and Kinross parts of Tayside Region. Some 83 estates over 1,000 acres are identified in the study and, for some of the major estates over 5,000 acres, the owners are listed. The paper goes on to examine a number of issues: sport hunting; public subsidies; reaping of benefits from public investments in infrastructure; preferential treatment by the state; land prices and patronage.

The paper concludes by noting that the concentrated pattern of private ownership found in the constituency and other parts of Scotland imposes a direct cost on local communities, the taxpayer and public through: stunted economic growth and depopulation; socially and environmentally unsound uses of land; the abuse and exploitation of public funds; and the denial of access to natural sites of great beauty.