Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 - relinquishment and assignation provisions: islands community impact assessment

Current Situation

Across Scotland’s islands, there are a number of secure 1991 Act agricultural tenancies and Limited Partnership tenancies.  However, it is not possible to identify how many tenant farmers may wish to relinquish and assign their tenancy and retire.  It is understood that there are a large number of individuals who potentially may be in a position to take advantage of this policy to take on an assignation of a tenancy should the opportunity arise.

The main source of data is the June Agricultural Census which collects data annually from approximately 35,000 farm holdings.  In the most recent Census, there were a total of 4,007 secure 1991 Act agricultural tenancies in Scotland, of which 355 are on islands.  There are also 294 Limited Partnership tenancies, of which 30 are on islands.

Due to the low numbers of both secure 1991 Act agricultural tenancies and Limited Partnerships on the islands it is not possible to provide a breakdown of data island by island because of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  We have instead compared island communities to the mainland.

The recent June 2020 Census data shows the number of farmers of retirement age and over with secure 1991 Act agricultural tenancies is slightly lower at 20% on islands compared to 26% on the mainland, however, as relinquishment and assignation covers both island and mainland situations the effects of these three SSIs will be very similar.