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Access The Scottish Land Fund, formally launched on 26 February with funding of £10.78, is a vital component of the new proposals, making lottery money available to communities wishing to exercise their right to buy. Commentary The Scottish Landowners Federation (SLF) have fundamental objections to legislation which they see as a disincentive to private landlords and businesses wishing to invest in the land (whom they see as the guardians of good stewardship): "it sends utterly the wrong signals to those who might be considering investing in the Highlands". However, others feel that the proposals do not go far enough to fulfil the stated objectives of empowering local communities and promoting sustainable development. A Herald headline proclaimed "a promised land in sight" (perhaps a more interesting Biblical reference than they imagined), but went on to argue that the right-to-buy provisions "have all the rigour and firmness of a party jelly and will do nothing to rid Scotland of the outrageous, occasionally evil-minded and often dangerously eccentric landlords who have imposed their will on tenant and neighbours alike". The Sunday Herald reported that "the Labour manifesto for the Scottish Parliament promised "radical" land reform, but campaigners fear this week's land reform bill has been diluted by the landowning lobby and resistance from civil servants". Key provisions seen as absent from the proposals include: 1. tackling absentee landlordism; 2. banning offshore trusts from owning land; 3. reforming the law of succession to break up large estates; 4. opening up the urban agenda. Within the Scottish Land Reform Convention (of which the churches, through ACTS, are founding partners), a range of concerns have been raised. The whole registration procedure (which has to be renewed every five years) seems to represent a serious bureaucratic impediment, requiring communities to be motivated to go through this process even when there is little likelihood of the land coming on to the market (when most privately owned rural land has not come on the market for over 100 years.) This is underlined by the new requirement that community bodies must fit into the form of a trust or a company limited by guarantee; democratic accountability can be secured in other ways. Not only do these rights only arise when land is transferred, but certain transfers are excluded - transfers as gift or inheritance, to a family member or family trust, by court order or bankruptcy. This severely limits any "empowerment" of communities. The provisions to avoid "cherry-picking" mean that communities could have to purchase a whole estate in order to acquire a small piece of land. Only 10% of land bought by a community body can be sold, and then only in the interests of the sustainable development of the community and with the consent of Ministers. While the stress on sustainable development is welcome, it is arguable that community bodies which have bought land at market value should not be under such restrictions. There has been no serious attempt as yet to ensure information about the real ("beneficial") ownership of land, although some research has been commissioned "to establish the possible need for improved information and advise on how that need could best be met". The current proposals would have frustrated rather than encouraging notable successes of recent years such as the Isle of Eigg Trust, by imposing rigid requirements which may not fit local need. Nor do they represent a serious effort to change "the most concentrated pattern of landownership in the world", with half of rural Scotland owned by 343 landowners.
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