The 2025 Land Reform Act is not the land settlement Scotland needs, but a platform on which further reform can be built, writes Ariane Burgess MSP.
Land is often treated as a niche policy area: something rural, technical, or peripheral to the “real” business of housing, climate, food, or inequality. That misconception probably tells us more about Scotland’s ownership patterns than about land itself. When land ownership is so distant from everyday life, it becomes easy to imagine that land is someone else’s concern.
But land is not a sector. It underlies Scotland’s political economy. It shapes who has power and who does not; where wealth accumulates and where it is extracted; what kind of housing is built, if any; whether nature is restored or further degraded; whether communities can act with agency or are locked into decisions taken elsewhere.
I first encountered this viscerally in the mid-1990s while carrying out a personal research project on the Highland Clearances. What struck me was not only the violence of dispossession, but the narrowing of possibility that followed. I often find myself wondering what Scotland’s landscapes and communities might look like if many more people had been able to own land and work with it across generations. That question still matters today.
We now have a far clearer understanding of the degraded state of Scotland’s nature, and of the role that centuries of extractive land management have played in producing it. It may not have been better had ownership simply been spread more widely under the same extractive model. What matters is communities and individuals having the opportunity to restore, innovate, and invent while working with nature. Land reform is not about nostalgia. It is about building a future that is socially just, ecologically regenerative, and democratically grounded.
What the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 changes
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 does not deliver that transformation on its own—but it does alter the terrain.
At its heart, the Act establishes the principle that very large landholdings carry heightened public responsibilities. Landowners above a defined scale are now required to engage more explicitly with the public interest, through land management plans and clearer expectations about transparency and accountability. This represents a shift away from the long-standing assumption that ownership alone confers absolute control, regardless of wider social or environmental consequences.
It is important to understand how this Bill reached the form it did. For part of the parliamentary process, the Scottish Greens were in a cooperation agreement with the Scottish Government. From that position, we worked constructively—often behind the curtain—to strengthen the Bill before it ever reached Stage 2 or Stage 3. Thresholds and the public interest test were negotiated consultation requirements long before the draft bill appeared in public.
One of the most contested elements was the threshold at which land management plans and lotting provisions would apply. The government initially proposed a 3,000-hectare threshold. We argued consistently for 500 hectares, reflecting the reality of land concentration in Scotland. While in government, it was difficult to shift the government that far, but the pressure was continuous. When the Bill was eventually published — with two different thresholds, 3,000 hectares in one place and 1,000 in another — we were no longer in government, but we immediately used our working relationship with ministers to have those aligned at 1,000 hectares. This avoided a confusing and incoherent framework and secured a consistent lower threshold than originally intended.
During this period, external pressure also mattered. Mercedes Villalba MSP brought forward a Members’ Bill making the case publicly for a 500-hectare threshold and a public interest test. That helped move the wider debate, even as we continued to make similar arguments within government.
Language also mattered. At one point, the Bill shifted from a public interest test to a narrower transfer test, focused primarily on the mechanics of a land sale rather than its wider consequence. We worked to get that approach reversed. A public interest test asks whether a transaction is procedurally sound. It signals that land is not just a commodity, but a shared resource with social, environmental, and economic consequences.
Alongside these headline shifts, Scottish Greens, in collaboration with numerous stakeholders, lodged a series of amendments that improved the Bill’s overall direction, including measures on transparency and recognition of diverse land uses. One successful amendment, on hutting, points toward a more plural and accessible relationship with land—something I return to later.
It is useful to think about this Act as a rock in the middle of a flowing river. Around it flows a much wider body of ongoing work. The Act matters because it reshapes that flow, even as other policies and practices continue to develop.
Land reform is not happening through this Act alone. It is unfolding across multiple areas of policy and legislation, including agricultural reform, planning, food policy, biodiversity and depopulation commitments, crofting law, and rural and island housing.
The Land Reform Act is one intervention within this wider flow—not a substitute for it.
What the Act does not yet resolve
Because land reform is fundamentally about power, legislation on its own is never sufficient.
Work by the Scottish Land Commission consistently points to the problem not just of scale, but of concentration. In many parts of rural Scotland, ownership functions in practice as a monopoly. I have met community members who are surrounded by land owned by a single individual or entity with a very particular vision of what Scotland should be like. In some cases, that owner controls not just the land, but the shop, much of the housing, the hotel, and key employment. Decisions about what can and cannot happen are effectively centralised in one pair of hands.
Some people tolerate this or try to work with it because they see no alternative. But many feel shut out. While the Land Reform Act will require consultation on land management plans, it is unlikely on its own to make people feel secure about staying. When people feel they have no meaningful say, hope drains away.
This connects directly to depopulation. When people who have lived in a place for generations, or for a decade, or even for a year decide they have no future voice, they leave. Land reform that does not confront concentration risks stabilising precisely the dynamics that hollow communities out.
Market incentives remain largely untouched. Land continues to function primarily as a store of wealth rather than as productive, shared infrastructure. Speculative ownership, including through carbon markets, risks driving up land values while delivering limited public benefit. Working with Professor Jill Robbie, drawing on her research into carbon markets, I brought forward amendments aimed at regulating this space. These were deemed outwith the scope of the Bill. However, we did secure provisions giving the Scottish Land Commission powers to review natural capital markets and monitor their impacts. That matters, but it is only a beginning.
There are also real challenges around enforcement. Any government that changes who owns land or how it is used faces determined opposition from wealthy interests prepared to take matters to court. Fear of expensive legal challenge can encourage caution. If we want bold change, we must back parties and governments willing to take risks, rather than rewarding caution.
Fiscal injustice remains another unresolved issue. For centuries, landowners have ensured they were paid public money for activities on their land, while securing exemptions from tax and business rates where possible. Shooting estates are a particularly stark example, benefiting from business rates relief while contributing little to local ecological resilience or social outcomes. Reform that leaves these structures intact risks protecting a system that extracts wealth from land ownership instead of putting land to work for communities and nature.
Finally, this Act deals almost entirely with rural land. Urban land and assets remain largely unaddressed. There were hopes that the Community Wealth Building Bill would open up new routes here, but that has not happened. Vacant and derelict land, land banking, and speculation in towns and cities continue largely unchecked.
Where next: the next steps we need to agree together
If this Land Reform Act is a floor rather than a ceiling, the question becomes: where do we need to focus next?
First, we must return explicitly to concentration. That means developing tools that examine patterns of ownership, not just individual estate size. Transparency is essential, but it must lead to action in cases where concentration undermines communities or blocks public good.
Second, we must also address absentee and opaque ownership. Land held by owners who are absent from the places it shapes—and ownership hidden through offshore structures—further weakens accountability and democratic control. Where land is effectively beyond local scrutiny or responsibility, stronger duties and clearer routes to intervention are required to ensure land serves the public interest.
Third, thresholds should continue to fall. The movement from 3,000 to 1,000 hectares shows what sustained pressure can achieve. Lower thresholds will require broader political alignment and public backing, but they are necessary if reform is to reach beyond the most extreme cases.
Fourth, urban land reform must be brought properly into the frame. Local authorities need stronger powers, access to finance, and clearer duties to acquire and repurpose land in the public interest.
Fifth, fiscal reform is unavoidable. Land value taxation must be accompanied by a comprehensive cadastral system, as recommended by the Scottish Land Commission. Complete transparency about who owns land, and where public money is invested, is foundational if land is to serve the common good.
Sixth, we should actively expand alternative relationships with land. The hutting amendment offers a glimpse of what this could look like. Affording more people the opportunity to engage with nature through huts on public land can help grow a population that knows, loves, and is capable of managing land in restorative and regenerative ways. Cultural change matters as much as legal change.
Finally, none of this will happen without organised pressure. Legislation follows movements. What is considered reasonable shifts when communities, tenants, workers, and campaigners act together and make demands unavoidable.
A platform, not an endpoint
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 is not the land settlement Scotland needs, but it is a platform on which further reform can be built.
The deeper question is whether we are willing to decide, collectively, what our land is for. If we want a Scotland where many more people have a stake in land—where land serves housing, food, nature, and democratic life—then we must be prepared to support bold change and move beyond risk aversion.
Land reform is not a technical fix. It is a shared commitment to fairness, responsibility, and care. The next phase will be shaped not only in parliament, but in communities, councils, and movements insisting that Scotland’s land works for the many, not the few.
Ariane Burgess is the Scottish Green MSP for the Highlands and Islands, working on land reform, community power, and ecological restoration.