Scotland's fourth land use strategy: consultation analysis

Background

Section 57 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 places a legal duty on Scottish Ministers to produce a land use strategy every five years. The Act also requires that the Scottish Government consults on its proposed approach before publishing the final strategy. In accordance with this requirement, Scotland’s Fourth Land Use Strategy (LUS4) is due to be published before 31 March 2026.

We published a consultation paper setting out our proposed approach on 6 August 2025. The consultation closed on 5 October.

It sought views on the following key areas:

• the role and positioning of the upcoming strategy as a document to influence policy makers and regulators in order to create an enabling environment that incentivises and/or supports land managers, communities and partnerships to further integrate land use/management
• the establishment of a new high level vision statement and a more inclusive thematic structure to the objectives to recognise and strengthen the connections between land use policy and other policy areas
• to further develop our understanding on the need for, and role of, spatial information to create a wider enabling environment to support Scotland’s multiple land-based targets and ambitions
• a two-phased delivery approach (including the publication of a delivery plan to be published within 12 months of the high-level Strategic LUS4 document), and identification of the key drivers of integrated land use that should shape the delivery plan