Review in bid to encourage community land ownership

The Scottish Land Commission is to review community right-to-buy mechanisms.

The agency has issued a call to contractors for tenders to assess the effectiveness of community right-to-buy mechanisms and to recommend ways to enable and encourage more community ownership in Scotland.

“The Scottish Land Commission is looking at community right-to-buy mechanisms to see how it can be made easier for more communities to take on ownership of land and buildings in both a rural and urban context,” said commission chairman Andrew Thin.

“This work will involve reviewing the legal mechanisms that exist to facilitate community ownership and also identify opportunities to encourage more community ownership through a change of culture so that community ownership becomes a more normal option for communities across Scotland.”

He said the final report from the review, which is due in August, will form the basis of recommendations to government ministers and an action plan of how the commission can work to encourage more community ownership and make more of Scotland’s land.

More than 562,000 acres, or 2.9% of the total land area in Scotland, is currently under community ownership.