Community Ownership in Scotland 2021

Main Findings and Introduction

There were 711 assets in community ownership as at December 2021. This is an increase of 48 (7%) from 663 in 2020. All but 20 of the assets in community ownership are land and/or buildings.

The Highland and Argyll and Bute local authorities together contain 259 assets, 36% of all assets in community ownership.

The 711 assets were owned by 484 community groups and covered an area of 211,998 hectares.

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 2021 the performance of the National Indicator on community ownership is improving, as the increase in the number of assets was greater than 3%.