Drawing on insights from community-based natural resource management and local development,  qualified evidence is offered suggesting that, as in the current Scottish case, community-centric land reform has a promising future. 

Central  is the power that a landowner holds over local land use decisions and the extent to which local communities and other stakeholders can influence/inform those decisions.

There is no country in the western world which has fewer people owning so much of its land as in Scotland and so there have been calls for land reform for hundreds of years. It is a social justice issue – but it is about so much more than that. It is about our environment, our wildlife, our communities, employment and homes for the next generation, the nation’s economy and the life of our towns and cities.

An illustrative map – based on real Scottish geographic data – showing what a reformed former grouse moor could look like.

An assessment of the economic potential of alternative uses for Scottish land currently used for grouse shooting.

Scotland has one of the most concentrated patterns of private land ownership in the developed world; just 450 people own over half of the private land in Scotland. This entitlement has survived un-challenged for 500 years, a privilege that has its roots in royal favours and aristocratic archetypes

There is an awful lot in the Plan. The following is a very quick summary of some of the key action points from the plan:

This report outlines the case for public land value capture – the process by which councils, not those selling land, can benefit from the increase in land value due to changing use (such as planning permission for housing) or can reduce house prices by not passing that uplifted cost on to renters and buyers of the houses built on such land. This briefing is based on Common Weal’s submission to the Planning Bill consultation in response to question, on alternative ways to finance infrastructure provision.

Resilient Recovery. We must emerge from the Covid pandemic in a way that fixes the problems raised by the crisis, fixes the problems evident before the crisis and makes us resilient; a green new deal; a new democracy; a national care service; Land reform; housing revolution; Controlling our own energy; better banking; and a focus on independence,.to future crisis like the climate emergency.