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

Check if you have a large land holding

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 (“the Act”) introduces new duties for some landowners.

Use this guidance to check whether those duties apply to you.

If you they do, you will need to:

• engage with local communities
• prepare and publish a land management plan
• follow additional rules before selling land

This guidance is in draft. The duties described here are not yet in force.

Quick check

Use this quick check to see if you can rule yourself out or if you should read the full guidance to see if the new duties apply to you.

The new duties do not apply to you if:

• you own your own home and no other land
• you only rent land from someone else

You should read the full guidance if any of the below apply to you:

• you own more than 1,000 hectares of land in Scotland
• you are associated with a company, trust or partnership that may own land in Scotland
• you co-own land with other people
• you are unsure about any of the above.

Who this guidance is for

This guidance is for people and organisations that own land in Scotland.

This includes:

• individuals
• companies
• partnerships
• trusts

What is a large land holding

You will need to follow new legal duties introduced by the Act if you own or control a large land holding.

A large land holding is land that meets all of the following criteria:

• it is an area (or areas) of land which is in the ownership or control of:
  • one person; or,
  • a set of persons (e.g. trusts, common ownership, etc) or,
  • connected persons (people or entities that are connected due to one having control over the other)
  • any combination of the above.
• areas of land that are included are ‘contiguous’ with each other – under the Act this means that the boundaries of the land are within 250 metres of each other.
• The total area of this land is more than 1,000 hectares.

Land can sometimes be counted together even when:

• it is divided into separate nearby areas or includes land recorded under multiple titles
• areas have different ownership arrangements – land you own can be counted together with land owned by people or organisations that are connected to you.

The steps below will help you work out if you have a large land holding.

What counts as land?

For the purposes of the Act, land includes:

• buildings and other structures
• inland water and other water covered land

It does not include the seabed but does include the foreshore.