Community Engagement Obligations and draft large land holdings guidance under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025– Consultation paper

Background / Introduction

About this consultation

This consultation seeks your views to inform the development of secondary legislation and guidance to implement community engagement obligations introduced by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 (“the Act”).

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025

The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 5 November 2025 and became an Act. It has two parts.

Part 1 introduces measures which will affect the owners of large land holdings. It does this by amending existing legislation, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. For simplicity, in this consultation we refer to ‘the Act’ when talking about measures introduced through the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025.

The measures in Part 1 of the Act include:

• Community-engagement obligations, and
• when a landowner plans to transfer land (for example by selling it):
  • pre-notification of an intention to transfer land,
  • a requirement for Scottish Ministers to consider, if that land holding should be divided and sold in small pieces (lots).

Part 2 of the Act includes measures relating to small landholdings, agricultural holdings and a model lease for environmental purposes and for hutting.

There was a full public consultation for these measures as part of the Bill process and many people and organisations gave views as part of consultation and Parliamentary scrutiny. As far as possible we have taken those views into account in the proposals set out for this consultation.

Topics not included in this consultation

This consultation does not cover any measures in Part 2 of the Act.

It also does not cover pre-notification or the requirement for Scottish Ministers to decide whether a land holding should be lotted before it can be sold.

We intend to consult separately on these provisions.

An overall timescale for implementation of Part 1 of the Act is set out at Annex A accompanying this consultation.

Structure of this consultation

Respondents do not need to answer every question in the consultation. You may choose to respond only to the sections that are relevant to your interests or expertise.

Part 1: Community Engagement Obligations

This part seeks views on the regulations and guidance that will establish community-engagement obligations for owners of large land holdings.

This part is likely to be of particular interest to:

• community bodies and community organisations
• landowners and land managers
• tenant farming, crofting and rural stakeholder organisations
• local authorities
• environmental organisations
• public bodies with an interest in land use and community development
• anyone with an interest in how land is owned, managed and used.

Part 2: Large Land holdings

This part seeks views on draft guidance to support people in identifying whether land falls within the definition of a large land holding under the Act.

This part is likely to be of particular interest to:

• private, public and community landowners and land managers
• legal professionals
• land agents and professional advisers
• representative bodies for landowners

Next steps

We now need to set out more detail on some of the requirements for land management plans (LMPs) and the process for community bodies and landowners around requests to lease land or be constituted as crofting land. This will be through a mixture of regulations and guidance and this consultation seeks views on our approach to this.

Regulations will be part of the law and set out what must be done. Guidance can set out what should be done, but has flexibility in how it is applied.

This consultation gives everybody the opportunity to put forward their views on the overall approach. There will be a further consultation on a draft of the regulations, which we expect to be in autumn 2027. Additionally, we will work with stakeholders as we further develop these regulations and the accompanying guidance.