menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

The big land question: Scots demand change, Holyrood delivers bureaucracy

3 0
12.10.2025

Twenty-five years after devolution, Scotland’s land remains in the hands of the few. A new bill promised reform, but delivers little—leaving communities sidelined and promises unfulfilled, says Andy Wightman.

As REVIVE publishes the Big Land Question results, we now have the evidence. The Scottish public seems to grasp the importance of land reform better than their elected representatives. They want transparency, accountability, limits on concentration, and real community power. They even support land taxes to fund change.

However, with Stage 2 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill proceedings concluded, and Stage 3 about to commence, nothing has changed to alter my original view that this Bill will achieve next to nothing in tacking the structural features of Scotland's landownership system. It does not deliver on the recommendations of the Scottish Land Commission, nor what was consulted upon in advance of the Bill, and it will not achieve the aims set out in the Bill's Policy Memorandum.

It will have little impact, beyond creating new complexities, friction and conflict in the land market for no evident gain. As I argued in March 2024, this Bill remains the least ambitious land reform bill ever introduced to the Scottish Parliament. It contains excessively bureaucratic, legalistic mechanisms to intervene in a vanishingly small number of instances with no prospect that much will change as a result.

Some modest improvements have been made to existing provisions in the Bill. But improving the design of ineffective policy mechanisms is hardly much to celebrate.

Read more:

I revealed in March this year that the pattern of privately-owned rural land is becoming more concentrated. My analysis of data relating to large scale (>500 ha) rural land sales shows that during 2020-2023, 54.4% of all such land transactions were acquired by those who already own land and are expanding their landholdings. It is this expansion of existing holdings that is driving the........

© Herald Scotland