The Scottish Government established the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) in July 2012 with a remit to identify how land reform will:
- “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;
- Generate, support, promote, and deliver new relationships between land, people, economy and environment in Scotland”.
Publication on May 20th of the Group’s Interim Report should have marked an important staging post on the journey towards the “innovative and radical” proposals for land reform to which the Scottish Government is apparently committed, and to which the above remit is supposed to contribute.
The contents of the report suggest otherwise. Far from beating a path towards radical land reform, the Group appears to be stuck on the hard shoulder of a more narrowly focused community ownership review. Continue reading
Beyond the Horizon 