Questions to support discussion on Land Reform Act community engagement obligations
Overview
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 introduces new duties for owners of large land holdings to engage with local communities to create a land management plan (LMP).
An LMP can be an important part of engagement between a landowner and the local community and help the local community understand how the land might be used or if it might be sold in the future.
Before this law comes into force, we have to set out more details, some of them which will be legal requirements (regulations) and some which will be expected but not legally required (guidance).
We recently published a public consultation asking for views on some of these issues, such as what information an LMP should include and what landowners should have to do to make sure they have meaningfully engaged with the local community as part of that process.
We want to make sure that everyone can input into this process but recognise that responding to a full written consultation may be challenging for some organisations, for example for smaller community groups. We have therefore produced this short survey with some targeted questions that you might find helpful as the basis for discussions.
Survey questions preview
The survey questions are included here for your reference. Please click 'Begin response' at the bottom of this page to proceed.
1. What other information would you or your community find helpful for the plan to include?
2. What steps or actions would you or your community want the landowner to take to make sure that engagement is meaningful?
3. What guidance or other information would be helpful?
Useful information about responding to this survey
As you complete your response, each page will provide the option to 'Save and come back later' at the bottom. This means you can save your progress and return to the consultation at any time before it closes. If you don't use this feature and leave the consultation midway through, your response will be lost.
Once you have submitted your response, you can enter your email address to get a pdf copy of your answers sent to you.
On the 'About You' page at the end of this consultation, organisations will have the opportunity to tell us more about their work and/or how their response was informed.
After the consultation has closed there will be a few months delay before any responses are published. This is because we must check any responses to be published abide by our Terms of Use.
All relevant submitted responses will be analysed. This may be carried out by third party organisations who Scottish Government, its executive agencies or non-ministerial offices, contract to do this work. Such data sharing will be governed by appropriate contractual arrangements to keep your data secure.
An analysis report will usually be published some months after the consultation has closed. This report will summarise the findings based on all responses submitted. It will be published on the Scottish Government website and you may be notified about it if you choose to share your email address with us.
You can also join our consultation mailing list where we regularly list newly published analysis reports (as well as new consultations).
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