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Who Owns Mid-Scotland and Fife?
Richard Leonard (1989)
Labour Party European Office, Inverkeithing, Fife
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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.
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