Proposals on secondary legislation the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 part three: crofting community right to buy as amended by the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015: consultation

2. Introduction

Part 3 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 (the 2003 Act) created a regime in which a CCB, representing an identified crofting community, may acquire eligible croft land (including salmon fishings, mineral rights (except mineral rights to oil, coal, gas, gold or silver)) associated with that crofting community and sporting rights. In addition, a CCB may acquire at the same time, or within a specified period after it has purchased the eligible croft land, the interest of the tenant in tenanted land.

Part 4 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 (the 2015 Act) amended the 2003 Act provisions, with revisions aimed at making the legislation easier to use for CCBs while ensuring that the legislation continues to strike a fair balance between the rights of landowners and the crofting communities and all parties involved in the legislative process. The 2015 Act received Royal Assent on 24 July 2015.

From the 2015 Act amendments emerged a number of policy proposals for secondary legislation relating to the crofting community right to buy. The Scottish Government sought views on these from relevant organisations and individuals in a consultation document published on 21 March 2016. 22 questions were posed relating to the applications forms to be used; the manner in which the public notice of the application should be given by Ministers; the conduct of the ballot; reimbursement of expenses associated with the ballot; notification of the Minister's decision; and procedures for claiming compensation, amounts payable and by whom.

Views on the policy proposals were invited by 20 June 2016.

Consultation responses

The Scottish Government received nine responses to the consultation. Eight of these were from organisations; one was from an individual. The organisations which responded represented a range of stakeholder categories. All responses were submitted via the online system, Citizen Space, established for consultation responses. Table 2.1 overleaf lists the respondents to the consultation by their category.

Table 2.1: Respondents to the consultation

Analysis of responses

The analysis of responses is presented in the following six chapters which follow the order of the topics raised in the consultation paper. 22 questions were posed by the consultation inviting a mix of closed and open responses. The analysis of responses to these is based on the views of those who responded to the consultation which are not necessarily representative of the wider population and cannot be extrapolated further.

All respondents used Citizen Space to submit their views. This database was exported by the analyst to an Excel database for detailed analysis.