MSPs from the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee are in Dumfriesshire today (Friday, November 1) to meet with landowners as part of its scrutiny of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.
Committee Convener, Edward Mountain MSP, Deputy Convener Michael Matheson MSP, and Members Monica Lennon MSP and Douglas Lumsden MSP will firstly members of the Langholm Initiative which is working to improve local services and facilities in the Muckle Toon.
It also ran a successful campaign to buy and look after land now forming the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.
There will also be informal meetings in the Langholm area with a selection of local landowners and community development trusts to hear their views on how the Bill could impact them.
Mr Mountain said: “We hope that this visit will help us bring to life some of the issues which have been raised with us at Holyrood. These include understanding how the Bill will impact estates of differing sizes and models of ownership. It also lets us get a sense of how rural communities in the South of Scotland feel about land reform and how they might be affected by the provisions in the Bill.
“Hearing directly from those affected by the Bill will provide valuable insight. We’ll take all our learning back to Holyrood to inform our scrutiny and ultimately the recommendations we make in our Stage 1 report.”
The committee will also call at Buccleuch Estates – the area’s largest landowner – to hear more about how it manages its land and assets, how it involves the local community in decisions, and its work in land divestment.
The visit will conclude with a trip Carrifran Wildwood, owned by the Borders Forest Trust, in the hills above Moffat.
The Bill sets out reforms which aim to change the pattern of land ownership in rural and island communities and impose new requirements on larger estates across Scotland. Reforms include, for example, that the sale of land, by those owning over 1,000 hectares, may be disallowed until Ministers have considered the impact on local communities.
Landowners may be required to break up their land into smaller ‘lots’ when selling, and provide advance notice of pending sales, to encourage interest from communities.
Another set of reforms in the Bill is to agricultural tenancies. In the Scottish Government’s view, these update the law to deal better with modern challenges like climate change and rebalance aspects of the landlord-tenant relationship.
Overall, the Scottish Government says that its underlying vision is for “a Scotland with a strong and dynamic relationship between its land and people, where all land contributes to a modern, sustainable and successful country, supports a just transition to net zero, and where rights and responsibilities in relation to land and its natural capital are fully recognised and fulfilled.”