The Scottish Highlands have the most concentrated land ownership in Europe. Absentee owners of large sporting estates monopolise land that prevents and discourages economic growth for local communities. In many parts of the Highlands, there is also a population crisis with local schools and health services at risk of permanent closure. The Land Reform Act back in 2003 was intended to put an end to land monopolies and mark the beginning of an economic and social renaissance in the Highlands, but progress has been disappointing to say the least.
Despite a Scottish Land Fund (SLF) worth millions, despite the creation of a Scottish Land Commission (SLC) stacked full of important people, and despite further major legislative changes in 2016, remoter areas of the Scottish Highlands continue to lose people while inequalities in terms of wealth and land ownership remain the worst in Western Europe. And all this at a time when the opportunities to generate wealth from wind and other renewable energy projects has never been greater.
Since 2016 the SLF has only spent 10% of its available funds on land reform projects (£6 million). For context, in the decade before the Scottish Land Reform (2003) Act was passed 23,000 hectares were transferred to community ownership but since 2016 only 3,000 hectares have been acquired. About £38million (60%) of SLF funding has instead gone to acquiring old buildings. While purchases of this kind bolster existing community life they do little in terms of repeopling remoter areas, and certainly do not constitute land reform. The 'additionality' of many of these acquisitions is also questionable as many of the properties were already in public ownership of one kind or another.
In rural areas the majority of land purchases appear to focus on providing community groups with small areas of land for cycling, walking the dog and nature conservation. All good things but again not land reform. There is also the recurring question of additionality. Much of this land was already in public ownership or in the case of the 'Tarras Valley Nature Reserve' was already fully protected for recreation and nature by the previous owner, Buccleuch Estates due to various heavyweight legal nature designations (SSSI, SPB etc). Buccleugh Estates must have been laughing all the way to the Bank when they received almost £3 million of public money for a clappit-doun grouse moor that they could not sell for commercial afforestation due to these designations.
The reasons behind this epic failure to reform land ownership are intertwined. Firstly, urban communities are easier to organise and may already have a history of use with the building as a community hub. Also, unlike owners of sporting estates, the previous owners are often very keen to sell to the community in order to improve their financial situation (e.g. Local Authority, Police, Church etc).
Secondly, rural land purchases to promote repopulation and the local economy are difficult to bring to fruition due to local politics and complexities/additional responsibilities (farming grants, deer management) and hostile big neighbours. Rural communities can often develop fractures between 'outsiders' and 'locals', especially with NIMBYism and nascent gentrification on the rise in many places.
Third, the changing economics of land ownership. The growth in renewables, especially wind turbines and the pressure on farming incomes have altered the economics of land sales considerably. Large profits can now be made from moorland that hitherto had little economic value for sport, forestry or sheep, and which could otherwise have been sold to the community.
Last and certainly not least, I think that political support for land reform has evaporated since 2016. The Scottish Government has been cosying up to Scottish Land and Estates for a number of years now and both the SLC or SLF have few Board members with any track record on land reform. The current SLC Chairman, Mike Russell is of course a prominent neo-liberal from the right wing of the SNP who previously called for the Scottish NHS to be privatised and for the nation's timber stocks to be sold to an American lumber corporation.
Sadly, I do not think much is going to change much in the near future. I am not convinced that current land reform proposals making their way through Holyrood will shift the dial. We need needs something bigger and better to repeople the Highlands and meet the social, cultural and environmental challenges that lie ahead. I do like a good chat around the table, but I don't think it will deliver meaningful change: a cup of tea and a couple of stale Rich Tea Biscuits is all you can probably expect from many landowners! The very idea that land injustice can be solved by talking around a table is well, terribly middle-class and doomed to fail.
What we need is a 'gateway' for new entrants who want to live on the land and gain access to opportunities for housing, farming, forestry and renewables and who will reinvigorate the local economy. To this end we need to establish a Scottish Bank for Rural Land and Development. With recurring capital funding of £10 million per annum for the first 10 years, the financial commitment from the Scottish Government would be small but the impact of this new Institution could be huge. It would offer something new and impactful: