Community Engagement Obligations and draft large land holdings guidance under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025
Community Engagement Obligations: Land Management Plans - community engagement
Community Engagement Obligations
The Act allows Scottish Ministers to make regulations establishing new community engagement obligations (“the obligations”) for owners of large land holdings.
The purpose of the obligations is to support engagement between landowners and local communities and improve transparency about how land is managed. The obligations must be informed by the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement (“LRRS”).
The Act requires the regulations to set out details on the following new obligations:
- Land Management plans ('LMPs') – landowners will need to engage with local communities and publish a plan setting out information about the large land holding
- Requests from community bodies – the landowner will need to consider reasonable requests to lease land or establish a croft.
Regulations will also need to set out when enforcement of these new obligations should start, and any grace periods when ownership of a large land holding changes.
The next pages ask questions focusing on each of these topics, starting with the approach to community engagement on LMPs below.
Community engagement on LMPs - Background
The 2025 Act requires landowners to engage with communities and tenants, including any crofters and small landholders, on the development of the LMP and any significant changes to the plan.
It does not include a definition of ‘communities’, or set out what would be considered sufficient engagement to meet these community engagement requirements.
What we propose
We propose that the definition of ‘communities’ should be set out in guidance. This would provide flexibility and allow guidance to be updated more easily in response to experience and good practice.
We want the process of community engagement to be proportionate. This means a balance will need to be struck in the regulations and guidance between providing certainty as to what constitutes compliance, and allowing flexibility for landowners and communities to engage in ways that best suit the circumstances. The following questions seek views on what must happen (and so would be in the regulations) and should happen (and so would be covered by guidance) in the engagement process.
Proposed definition of communities
We propose that the definition should include the local geographic community. This aligns with the purpose of LMPs and existing definitions of communities who should be engaged in decision-making about land.
We propose that ‘communities of interest’ should not be included in the definition of communities, unless they can demonstrate a regular and ongoing use of land on the landholding.
Further information: Geographic communities and communities of interest
Geographic communities are “individuals who live in a particular place”, for example it could be those who live in a particular town, on a single street, or on across a whole island.
Communities of interest are defined as “communities of people who are connected through a shared interest rather than by place”. For example, in relation to landholdings this could include a group who uses the land for leisure purposes, such as a mountain biking group, or a group concerned with the preservation of historical sites.