Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: equality impact assessment

Background

The Bill covers four main policy areas:

• it takes forward the government’s land reform programme;
• it modernises small landholdings legislation.
• It further improves agricultural holdings legislation
• it supports a new letting arrangement to help people to undertake a range of land use activities (Land Management Tenancy (LMT));

Land Reform

In early 2018, the Scottish Land Commission (SLC) issued a public call for evidence, inviting people with experience of living and working in communities where most of the land is owned by a very small number of individuals to share their experience. The analysis of this call for evidence was published in 2019 and concluded that “In some parts of Scotland concentrated landownership appears to be causing significant and long term damage to the communities affected”^[1].

Subsequently, in February 2021, the SLC published a further paper making recommendations for legislation^[2]. The SLC’s recommendations have helped inform the measures in this Bill which apply to large-scale landholdings.

Those measures have been developed following further consultation, stakeholder engagement and policy development. The proposals put forward in this Bill are intended as targeted and proportionate ways of addressing key risks identified by the SLC through its work on scale and concentration.

The land reform proposals will mean that:

• Scottish Ministers can make regulations which require that:
  • Owners of large landholdings will need to publish and produce a ‘Land Management Plan’, which is a plan that gives information about the land and how they plan to use it.
  • A ‘large landholding’ is a landholding bigger than 3,000 hectares, or for a landholding on an island, over 1,000 hectares and over 25% of the island.
  • Landowners will need to make sure that when they are making this plan, they talk to local people who might be impacted (‘community groups’), allowing them to share their views if they want to.
  • If a community group asks the landowner to lease land to them (to use the land for a period of time for a specific reason, for example for a community garden), then the landowner will need to respond to the request. The landowner doesn’t have to agree, but if they don’t agree then they need to let the group know why (e.g. if they need that land for another reason).
• If a landowner owns more than 1,000 hectares of land of land wants to sell some or all of their land they will need to take extra steps:
  • The owner will need to let the Scottish Government know ahead of the sale about the land they intend to sell, so that they can send information to community groups in the area and ask them if they would like to apply to buy some or all of the land. The owner won’t be able to continue with selling the land (for example: putting an advert online or to other buyers) until community groups have been given the chance to buy the land if they want to.
  • A new ‘transfer test’ will take place when an owner is planning to sell more than 1,000 hectares, to let Scottish Ministers consider if it may improve the sustainability of communities in the area if land is be sold not as one big landholding, but as smaller landholdings to different people.

These proposals affect landowners of landholdings in scope through placing new requirements on them and are expected to positively impact local communities and the wider public. The proposals aim to:

• improve the information that the public and local communities have about very large landholdings and how they are used;
• give communities in rural areas more say in decisions about the land on which they live and work;
• increase opportunities for community bodies to purchase land when the landowner is planning to sell; and
• allow Ministers to consider (before a planned sale) if land being sold in lots could make a community more sustainable.

By giving more opportunities to purchase land and encouraging landowners and local communities to talk more to each other, we also expect that the Bill will help a wider range of people to own land.

Modernising leases of small landholding and agricultural holdings and providing for a new model lease (the ‘land management tenancy’)

The proposals provide small landholders with a modernised legal framework which is more comparable to the rules for crofting and agricultural holdings and collectively will provide greater equality of opportunity for tenant farmers.

This will ensure that the legal framework will provide the support needed in the 21^st Century and enable small landholders to play their part in the Scottish Government’s Vision for Agriculture

The proposals will support the development of a new model lease, that will enable tenants to carry out a wide range of broadly environmental activities (including farming activities) on land

The model lease is intended to support people to use and manage land in a way that will help develop the new types of land use that will help us to address the climate change and nature loss challenges. There is a strong public interest in supporting that transition. This proposal places a duty for Scottish Ministers to publish a model lease, and Scottish Ministers intend to engage closely with key stakeholders for that purpose.