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Land Reform (Scotland) Bill - Written Evidence to the Justice 2 Committee of the Scottish Parliament
Andy Wightman, 21 December 2001
Caledonia Centre for Social Development
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In this paper the Centre indicates that land research evidence has yet to
reveal a country anywhere in the world with a more concentrated pattern of
private landownership than Scotland. This simple fact, allied to the remarkably liberal
and unregulated market in rural land, is at the heart of the problem of
landownership in Scotland.
The Policy Memorandum prepared by the Scottish Executive which
accompanies the Bill identifies two goals. These are:
![bullet](_themes/tabs/atabbul1.gif) | increased diversity in the way land is owned and used - in other words,
more variety in ownership and management arrangements (private, public,
partnership, community, not-for-profit) which will decrease the
concentration of ownership and management in a limited number of hands,
particularly at local level, as the best way of encouraging sustainable
rural development; and |
![bullet](_themes/tabs/atabbul1.gif) | increased community involvement in the way land is owned and used, so that
local people are not excluded from decisions which affect their lives. |
Will this Bill achieve these goals? In terms of the pattern of
landownership, Scotland already has an incredibly diverse array of
landholding types. What is needed is not greater diversity but a fundamental
shift in favour of certain aspects of that diversity - namely community,
not-for-profit and individual ownership.
The goal talks of private, public, partnership, community and not-for-profit
- 5 different arrangements for landownership - and yet the Bill aims to
advance only one of those, namely community ownership. There is nothing in
this bill to promote the other 4 forms of ownership.
The paper concludes with a series of specific comments on technical aspects
of the Bill.
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