Community right to buy review: consultation

2. Consultation Purpose and Process

2.1 What is the consultation about and who is it for?

This consultation concerns improvements to ensure that Community Rights to Buy (CRtB) make as significant a contribution as possible to our aim of increasing community ownership of land and assets. We want communities across Scotland to be able to access the rights to buy that have been brought in by successive Scottish Governments, and we want the right to buy process to be as straightforward and user friendly as possible. That ambition applies to everyone who has cause to interact with the process, whether they be a community group, owner of assets, interested members of the public or legal professionals.

Scottish Government committed to a public consultation on Community Rights to Buy in the Programme for Government 2024 to 2025. Through this consultation, the Scottish Government wants to understand how these rights can best be improved to facilitate community ownership.

The consultation document examines options for improvement across various stages of the CRtB processes and asks consultees for their opinion on these.

The consultation is open to all members of the public. We are particularly keen to hear from those who have interacted with the rights in the past, whether as a seller, buyer, practitioner or interested party.

2.2 The consultation process

The consultation will run for 12 weeks and will remain open for responses until 5 October 2025.

To respond, please use the Scottish Government’s consultation hub Citizen Space, which can be accessed online Community right to buy: review

We appreciate this is a detailed consultation and you may not be able to complete it in one sitting. You can save and return to your responses while the consultation is still open. We would stress that there is no requirement to complete every question in the consultation. You may choose to respond only to the questions or sections you have an interest in. However, please ensure that your consultation responses are submitted before the closing date on 5 October 2025.

If you are unable to or choose not to respond using our consultation hub, please complete the Respondent Information Form included in this document and send your responses and consultation questions to keepingthepromiseconsultations@gov.scot

2.3 Engagement Sessions

Details on the engagement events being held will be shared later.

2.4 Impact Assessment

A Data Protection Impact Assessment has been carried out as part of the preparation of this consultation document and will be kept under review as it progresses. A key aspect of this will be to review the data that is gathered as part of the consultation process and to delete it once it is considered to be no longer required for the purposes of the review. This is currently expected to be around 1 year after the completion of the review.

2.4.1 Special category data

The consultation does not request any Special Category Data. However, it is possible that Special Category Data (e.g. sensitive personal data such as political opinions) may be volunteered as part of your response to the consultation. We ask that all respondents take care not to include any sensitive personal data in their responses as to do so may mean that your response is rejected.