Land Reform Revisited: The Land of Scotland and the Common Good

Pages410-413
Published date01 September 2014
DOI10.3366/elr.2014.0235
Date01 September 2014
AuthorMalcolm M Combe
<p>The Scottish land question is perennial. There may have been times when land law reform has faded from the foreground of public consciousness in Scotland, but now is not such a time. Current topicality can be evidenced by the publication of <italic>The Land of Scotland and the Common Good</italic>, the final report (henceforth the “Report”) of the Scottish Government-appointed Land Reform Review Group (“LRRG”).<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn1"><sup>1</sup> </xref><fn id="fn1"><label>1</label> <p>Scottish Government, <italic>The Land of Scotland and the Common Good</italic> (2014), available at <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/05/2852" xlink:type="simple"><italic>http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/05/2852</italic> </ext-link>.</p> </fn> The Report has brought forward some interesting and challenging proposals for innovation in Scots property law.</p> THE GROUP

The LRRG was constituted as an independent review group in 2012. It initially comprised three members and a number of advisers who were provided with a three- pronged remit to explore how land reform would:2

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/Review/land-reform/Remit .

Enable more people in rural and urban Scotland to have a stake in the ownership, governance, management and use of land, which will lead to a greater diversity of land ownership, and ownership types, in Scotland;

Assist with the acquisition and management of land (and also land assets) by communities, to make stronger, more resilient, and independent communities which have an even greater stake in their development; and

Generate, support, promote and deliver new relationships between land, people, economy and environment in Scotland.

The broad nature of the remit is immediately apparent. A “call for evidence” relating to this wide remit was issued, to which 484 responses were received.3

The majority of submissions are available here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/Review/land-reform/LRRG-Submissions . Some were submitted anonymously, others have been withheld for reasons of confidentiality as explained on the LRRG website. The non-anonymous, non-confidential submission of the writer is one of the available responses.

Those submissions and other evidence-gathering by the LRRG fed into an interim report, published on 10 May 2013.4

See M Combe, “The road to land reform, but where is it going?” (2013) 58 JLSS 34.

Its publication roughly coincided with something of a reshuffle of the membership of the LRRG, with the departure of two members (Professor James Hunter and Dr Sarah Skerratt), leaving it with four members (Dr Alison Elliot (Chair), Dr John Watt, Ian Cooke, and Pip Tabor), one special adviser (Robin Callander) and a
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