Community right to buy review: consultation

3. Review of Community Rights to Buy

3.1 Review Process

In March 2024, during a visit to the Heart of Newhaven community group in Edinburgh, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands, Mairi Gougeon, announced that the Scottish Government would undertake a review of all the Community Rights to Buy. The review began in July 2024 and is being conducted in four phases:

3.1.1 Phase 1

The initial phase gathered evidence and views on the improvements we could make to Community Rights to Buy through informal discussions and evidence collection with stakeholders and community groups, to get their views on the current rights. We also issued a general request for evidence of issues and improvement, to allow anyone to contribute. We asked what works, what doesn’t, does anything need to be added, simplified, or removed?

This phase was completed in September 2024.

3.1.2 Phase 2

The next phase collated and analysed the feedback from these discussions, identifying broad themes. This allowed us to develop improvement proposals which consider processes, guidance, and legislative changes across all the rights in the round and as they relate to one another. We shared our proposals with Ministers before consulting on them.

This phase was completed in May 2025.

3.1.3 Phase 3

This is the current phase during which we are consulting on our proposals. This phase will also include further stakeholder engagement and discussions.

It is due to complete in October 2025.

3.1.4 Phase 4

In the final phase we will analyse the consultation responses. This will result in a final set of proposals for the consideration of Scottish Ministers by December 2025.

3.2 The Existing Context for Community Rights to Buy

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 introduced two rights to buy. The Act introduced Part 2 - Community Right to Buy, which allows compliant community groups (by which we mean groups who have received notification from Scottish Ministers that they meet the requirements of the legislation) to apply for a right to register an interest in assets that they felt could contribute to the community’s well-being and future prosperity. If an application is successful, and the owner choses to sell at a later date, the community group is given the first opportunity to purchase those assets, at market value.

It also introduced the Crofting Community Right to Buy (Part 3), which is a compulsory purchase right, meaning that crofting communities can apply to Scottish Government to require an owner to sell to the community, at market value, whether or not the owner wishes to. Whilst this right has never been used to its conclusion, it has been a key aspect in several successful crofting community buy outs.

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 amended these rights in several ways, not least opening them up to the whole of Scotland, where they had previously been limited to rural areas.

It also introduced a new compulsory purchase right: the Community Right to Buy Abandoned, Neglected or Detrimental Land (known as ‘Part 3A’). This gives communities the right to apply to Scottish Government to require an owner to sell land at market value, where they can demonstrate that the owner has allowed the land to deteriorate to such as state that it is causing harm to the environmental wellbeing of the community.

The 2015 Act also introduced Asset Transfer Requests, offering community groups another opportunity to acquire assets owned by public bodies.

Most recently the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 introduced a further compulsory purchase right, the Right to Buy land to Further Sustainable Development, if communities can demonstrate that they could use assets in a much more sustainable and beneficial way than they are currently being used.

All four of these rights (excluding the Asset Transfer provisions) are administered by the Scottish Government’s Community Land Team. The team provide guidance to groups that want to apply for any of the rights, from the start of the process where groups are seeking to become compliant community bodies to be eligible to use the rights, through to assessing applications and making recommendations to Scottish Ministers on whether they should approve an application.

Guidance on all of the rights are available on the Scottish Government’s web pages (Community Rights to Buy).