The Scottish Land Commission and ‘robust land reform’

The new Scottish Land Commission came into operation on April 1^st. That might not seem like a particularly big deal. Especially given that recent Scottish land reform has been dominated by the passing of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016; both highly controversial pieces of legislation designed to help diversify Scotland’s extraordinarily concentrated pattern of private land ownership. But Scotland’s Parliamentarians have ‘previous’ when it comes to resting on their laurels while fondly imagining that the ‘land question’ has been legislatively fixed. As the almost decade-long policy hiatus following the passing of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 shows, it’s all too easy to let the political impetus for land reform dissipate in the absence of drivers to keep it on the policy agenda.  So the creation of the Scottish Land Commission to provide “direction, leadership, and strategic thought to land reform in Scotland” matters because it represents a potentially significant institutional driver for retaining and rejuvenating that impetus.

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