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Briefing Document No 6 - Page 3 of 4
"Whose Land Is It Anyway?" - Continued.
Access
The proposals for a right of "responsible access" will apply to all land (including enclosed agricultural land) and inland water; the right can be exercised individually or in groups, for "informal recreation or passage". A "Scottish Countryside Access Code" to be prepared by Scottish Natural Heritage will set out guidance on what constitutes "responsible access", and there is to be provision for handling disputes through "local access fora".
The White Paper recognises that this new right will not of itself significantly extend the opportunity for people to enjoy the countryside. Local authorities will therefore be given a series of new responsibilities to facilitate and plan for access in their areas. However, no mention is made of any funding implications in this.
Action Plan
As in other areas of policy, an Action Plan has been published to monitor progress on land reform. Further legislation is planned, on "real burdens", leasehold casualties, security of agricultural tenure, extension of crofting tenure and devolution to local level of crofting regulation. Action without legislation is also promised, to require public landowning bodies to involve local communities in managing their land (plans have already been announced by Forest Enterprise and SNH), and to establish Codes of Good Practice for rural landownership and land use. Councils are also expected to produce community plans for rural land use, by January 2000.
Crucially, there is a commitment to an evaluation of possible tax changes re (a) abolishing national rate relief on sporting rights and on forestry and agriculture, and (b) moving to a land value taxation basis.
Areas of Concern
The various stages of consultation through which land reform proposals have come have brought land reform into the mainstream of debate but blunted much of the edge of radical reform. The current package shows more sign of being trimmed by civil service and ministerial caution and their judgments as to what is cost effective than by the responses or even the lobbying of the Scottish Landowners Federation; the result is arguably too modest to justify the great claims of "overhauling land ownership in Scotland and delivering real changes". The danger of the present combination of "soft" headline proposals and technical legal changes is that they draw the momentum from land reform without addressing the real issues from which the movement for change arose.
There is a specific concern that even some of the current proposals might be challenged in the courts as conflicting with the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the relevant section clearly envisages that there is a public interest in regulating land tenure and use, as is done to a much greater extent elsewhere in Europe; it specifically provides that safeguards for private property rights "shall not ... in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest".
Among the key areas of continuing concern are:
The abolition of the feudal system of land tenure may create unrestricted property rights in land, with no "conditionality" in ownership to recognise the impact on individuals and communities of the exercise of these rights;
Scotland will retain perhaps the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in Europe - half of Scotland's land is owned by 343 landowners;
In both rural and urban communities, those who control significant areas of land have power over the well-being and life of the whole community that is not democratically acceptable (even if frequently exercised benevolently);
Problems in finding land for housing, for enterprise projects, or for other community purposes remain largely untouched by the present proposals;
Pastoral problems like the evictions on a Deeside estate which partially prompted the CofS report on land reform, or the more publicised difficulties of the Carbeth Hutters, are not yet addressed.
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