Land Reform (Scotland) Bill information: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the following information:

a) The total number of landholdings the Scottish Government anticipates the provisions in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill as amended after Stage 2 will apply to.

b) The total number of landholdings the Scottish Government anticipates the provisions in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill as amended after Stage 2 will apply to annually.

c) Any assessment carried out by the Scottish Government on how lotting provisions will impact the rural economy.

Response

All of the information you have requested can be found in the published Land Reform (Scotland) Bill:business and regulatory impact assessment.

Information relating to point a) can be found in Table 3, which sets out that we estimate there to be 1,066 landholdings of over 1000 hectares, covering approximately 55% of Scotland’s total land area.

For point b) paragraph 4.4.6 sets out that if applying to landholdings over 1000 hectares (options 3 and 4 considered in the BRIA), 100-170 land transactions per year are estimated to be impacted by pre-notification. Table 11 also sets out an estimated 5 to 15 sales per year could be impacted by the
transfer test.

Under the Bill as amended at Stage 2, the estimated 1,066 landholdings of over 1000 hectares would be required to produce a land management plan (LMP) following the relevant regulations, and this LMP would need reviewed every 5 years (consistent with Option 4 considered in the BRIA). The BRIA (4.2.9) highlights that further detail in relation to LMPs (including the procedures by which plans must be produced, consulted on, published, adhered to and updated, and the ways in which the plans will interact with other codes and obligations) will be set out as regulations in secondary legislation.

Information relating to point c) is considered both at section 4.4 'Costs and Benefits of options to Adopting Pre-Notification requirements and a Transfer test on transfers of large-scale holdings', and in section 6 of the BRIA 'Other impact tests'.

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