Community Engagement Obligations and draft large land holdings guidance under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025

Landowners impacted by the community engagement obligations will need time to take steps to ensure they are compliant with the obligations once the Scottish Parliament has agreed the detail of the regulations. Similarly, communities, public bodies and others with a role in supporting the obligations will need time to ensure they are ready to fulfil their roles.

To allow time for this, there will need to be a grace period before the obligations can be enforced. The grace period would begin once the regulations come into effect, and would end after a defined period of time which will be set out in the regulations.

Once the grace period ends, the enforcement measures would come into effect.

This means that specified organisations will be able to report breaches of the obligations to the Land and Communities Commissioner. They will have powers to investigate breaches, to work with landowners to remedy these, and to issue fines for non-compliance.

When considering the length of the grace period, we need to consider the steps those who must comply with the obligations need to take. For landowners, the most significant steps are likely to be:

• establishing if their landholding is in scope of the obligations, if they have not already done so, and
• preparing and engaging on the development of their LMP, and making it publicly available.
• Establishing how people should make lease or croft applications

The grace period needs to balance allowing time for landowners to take the necessary steps to become compliant with obligations, with the impact on communities of delaying the enforcement of the requirements.