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

Community bodies will want to be confident that their request will be considered and landowners will want to make sure they have met their legal duties to consider a request.

We have set out a summary of the process followed by some more detail and individual questions on each part. In summary, we expect the overall process to be:

Step 1 – the landowner considers if the request from the community body meets the criteria for a reasonable request

Step 2 – the landowner acknowledges the request within a certain timescale

Step 3 – the landowner gives due consideration to the request

Step 4 – the landowner responds to the request within a certain timescale

Step 5 – the community body can ask further questions if needed.