What next for community land policy? Dr Calum MacLeod

“For most buyers an estate is a luxury purchase to enjoy, not unlike a superyacht or a Lamborghini”.

Land reform as “measures that modify or change the arrangements governing the possession and use of land in Scotland” (Land Reform Review Group, The Land of Scotland and the Common Good, 2014)

“Land is a finite and crucial resource that requires to be owned and used in the public interest and for the common good.” (LRRG, 2014)

Policy Framework for Community Land Ownership Land Reform Act 2003 Community Empowerment Act 2015 Land Reform Act 2016 HIE & SG institutional support Scottish Land Fund (£10M p/a) Scottish Land Commission (privileging rural and urban communities)

The legitimate place of people in the landscape – renewing and repopulating rural Scotland Duty on SG Ministers to consider desirability of repopulation and resettlement in planning policies Powers for SG & LAs to designate & purchase land for resettlement Duty on SG to create map of ‘no longer existing communities’ New guidance for meaningful consultation with communities in designation processes

The [“wild”] land question?

We were never “wild”

“Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation – indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can at least for a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization.”

Community land ownership needs to be normalised as one element of a less concentrated, more diverse and transparent system of land ownership in Scotland Need imaginative cross-cutting policy thinking around rural & urban renewal & relationship with land, incorporating wider range of policy tools