Community Ownership in Scotland 2020

Main Findings and Introduction

There were 612 assets in community ownership as at December 2020. This is an increase of 15 (3%) from 597 in 2019. All but seven of the assets in community ownership are land and/or buildings.

The Highland and Argyll and Bute local authorities together contain 234 assets, 38% of all assets in community ownership.

The 612 assets were owned by 422 community groups and covered an area of 191,261 hectares.

Introduction

There is increased focus on community ownership in Scotland. The Scottish Government asked the Scottish Land Commission (SLC) to review existing community right to buy mechanisms and recommend how best to enable community ownership.

Following the recommendations of the SLC a National Indicator on community ownership was developed and included in the National Performance Framework in 2019.

As at December 2020 the performance of the National Indicator on community ownership is maintaining, as the increase in the number of assets was not greater than 3%.