Review of the Guidance on Engaging Communities in Decisions Relating to Land

1. Introduction

Scotland’s approach to land reform over the past two decades has led to a fairer, more inclusive and transparent system of land ownership and use. The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 (“the Act”) was a pivotal step on the land reform journey, introducing a range of measures to develop land reform, driving change in how Scotland’s land is owned and used. The Act established a duty on Scottish Ministers to issue Guidance on Engaging Communities in Decisions Relating to Land (“the Guidance”), which was first published in 2018. The Act also requires Scottish Ministers to report on the effectiveness of the Guidance periodically. It was first reviewed in 2021, with a report laid before the Scottish Parliament. This report sets out the findings of a second review conducted in 2026.

An important provision of the Act was a requirement for Scottish Ministers to publish the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement (“the LRRS”). This states the Scottish Government’s vision for the ownership, use and management of land, setting out how we see the balance between the rights of those who are making decisions about land, communities and society at large. The Guidance is one of the primary ways the Scottish Government supports the LRRS and in particular its principle 7 – “There should be meaningful collaboration and community engagement in decisions about land”.

These provisions sit within a wider programme of land reform. The Scottish Parliament has introduced a series of landmark land reform statutes since devolution. These have sought to abolish feudal tenure, increase community ownership, improve transparency, address harm caused by the concentration of land ownership and ensure a fairer balance of power between communities and landowners in all sectors:

• One of the first Acts of the Scottish Parliament was the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, which brought to an end the old system of feudal tenure which had existed in Scotland for more than 800 years.
• The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 established statutory public access rights. Community ownership has been a consistent feature of land reform in Scotland and this Act provides a legal framework that encourages and enables communities to buy land.
• The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 extended rights to acquire land that is abandoned, neglected or detrimental to sustainable development.
• The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 established the Scottish Land Commission (“the Commission”) and introduced measures to improve transparency through the Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land. It also set out requirements for Ministers to publish the LRRS and to issue the Guidance.
• The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 (“the 2025 Act”) builds on this programme by encouraging more responsible and diverse land ownership, increasing transparency, strengthening requirements for community engagement, and addressing issues of fairness, equality and social justice in how land is owned, accessed and used. This represents a further step towards ensuring that the benefits of land ownership and decisions about how land is owned, managed and used, are more widely shared. A significant element that the 2025 Act introduces is a new legal requirement for community engagement, which applies to the owners of large landholdings (those over 1,000 hectares). These provisions are not yet in force.

This report deals only with the obligation to report on the effectiveness of the Guidance made under the 2016 Act. The Guidance was not directly modified by the passage of the 2025 Act. However, as part of implementing the 2025 Act, and other upcoming work such as the forthcoming 2027 review of the LRRS, we will consider how these different documents and processes can best support and complement each other.