| 3.
Land Reform Legislation |
| 3.1 To
complement these law reforms, new legislation is needed,
to secure the public interest in land use and land
ownership, and to increase local involvement and
accountability. |
| 3.2 There
is now general agreement that it would be fitting if a
Land Reform Bill were amongst the earliest legislation to
be considered by the new Scottish Parliament. The Land
Reform Policy Group has identified the following possible
agenda for early legislation. |
| |
| Time to assess the public interest |
- Legislation to allow
time to assess the public interest when major
properties change hands. The most important
factors are that the operation of the restriction
should be predictable by all concerned, and that
it should be focused on those areas where it
would have most effect in terms of the objective
of removing barriers to sustainable rural
development. The criteria for selection of areas
where this would apply would therefore be that
they consist predominantly of remote fragile
communities in need of special help and
protection. The legislation should be so
structured as to allow the Government to vary the
areas selected over time, in the light of
experience and changes in circumstances. Within
these selected areas, the requirements would
apply to all land offered for sale, above a
chosen threshold. There will be further
discussions on what this threshold should be. The
legislation would require owners to give notice
of the forthcoming sale; a minimum period between
notice to sell and closing date would be set; and
a new power would be created for Government to
intervene in the public interest to impose a
further period of delay to the closing date. The
provisions would apply to all transfers for
value, whether or not the property was offered on
the open market.
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| Community right to buy |
- Legislation to give
duly constituted community bodies a community
right to buy land in areas of special importance
in rural Scotland as and when it changes hands.
This would apply to the same land as would the
power to allow time to assess the public
interest. The community right to buy would apply
to property only at the point when the owner
chooses to dispose of it. In addition, the right
to buy would apply only to property on the basis
the owner chooses ie not more or less or
different from the lot(s) offered for disposal.
Transfers for value when the property does not
come on the open market would also be covered by
means of the notification system proposed above.
The legislation would provide that, when relevant
property in the areas concerned is offered for
sale, a community group which satisfied a
Scottish Minister that community purchase by that
group would be in the public interest could
exercise a right to buy at a price to be set by a
Government Appointed Valuer provided that they
came up with the necessary funding within a given
period. Any disputes as to valuation would, as
with compulsory purchase compensation, be settled
by the Lands Tribunal for Scotland. Such
community bodies would have to demonstrate that
they were representative of and supported by the
local community, had the sustainable development
of that community as their primary object, and
were properly constituted.
|
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| Compulsory purchase power |
- Legislation would
give Scottish Ministers a new compulsory purchase
power exercisable where it appeared to them to be
in the public interest. Such a provision would,
for example, deter evasion of the community right
to buy in circumstances such as those where
shares in a company are traded, rather than the
land itself. This would mean that, where the
beneficial ownership of relevant land had been
transferred for value without the community
having been given the opportunity to purchase it,
a Scottish Minister would be able to acquire the
land on compulsory purchase terms for transfer to
that community.
|
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| Beneficial ownership |
- A reserve power to
enable the Secretary of State to investigate
beneficial ownership of land, where a clear need
for such information exists in the public
interest.
|
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| Database on rural landholdings |
- Legislation for
disclosure so far as possible of data held by
relevant public bodies and public utilities to
supplement action to create a publicly accessible
(non-authoritative) database on rural
landholdings (see Chapter 7). Information
obtained in this way should be combined with the
new database containing information that can be
disclosed without legislation. Similar
legislation would be needed to extend the current
Scottish Land Information Service (ScotLIS)
project, in the event of the pilot being
successful. It will be necessary to look at how
ScotLIS information might be integrated with the
database mentioned above.
|
| 3.3 Early
legislation on this basis is expected to be widely
welcomed, and would make a significant contribution
towards comprehensive land reform. |
