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Community Land Scotland

We are the voice of Scotland’s
Community Landowners

Our vision is for the community ownership of land and buildings to be a significant driver of sustainable development across the whole of Scotland. We work to create conditions that make it easier for communities to own land and buildings.

We influence policies affecting rural and urban communities, particularly around land reform, ecological crisis, repopulation, urban development, Community Wealth Building and empowerment, and the Just Transition to Net Zero. Our learning comes from the real life experiences of our many members.

Local people should be leading development in their own communities. With the right policies in place, community-led regeneration of urban and rural areas can be transformational.

Our policy work is closely connected to the work undertaken by the Community Ownership Hub in Glasgow and the Clyde Valley. Further details of their policy work can be found here.

WHAT WE’RE WORKING FOR

Our focus on the three areas of policy below aims to create resilient, circular, sustainable local economies and cultures which will help create more housing and jobs, retain and grow local populations while also helping Scotland’s ecosystems recover.

Community landownership addresses the climate and biodiversity crises as local people want to protect, enhance and expand the green and blue spaces around them and ensure they live in an environment in which their families and communities can thrive. Concentrated land ownership has resulted in Scotland having some of the most degraded land in Europe, whereas our members are leading the way in renewable energy and ecological restoration.

The long-term solutions to the nature crises, cost of living crisis, growing inequality and political, economic and cultural alienation are to think locally by empowering communities around Scotland in order to address the global challenges we face.

KEY AREAS OF WORK

Influencing Land Reform

Scotland is leading the world in its approach to addressing the historic inequality and injustice of land ownership and the impact this still has on Scotland today. We campaign for further community ownership and the end of monopoly landholdings.

We advocate for robust and ambitious land reform legislation which improves conditions for prospective community owners and makes it fundamentally easier for communities to buy land and assets.

We also advocate for legislation and regulation which adds transparency to the land market, restricts monopoly ownership and ensures a fairer distribution of land ownership.

Discover how we’re ensuring community landownership and the voice of communities are central to this debate.

Driving Community Wealth Building

Community Wealth Building can place land reform and community ownership at the heart of the wellbeing economy. We advocate for Community Wealth Building to create vibrant local economies which retain wealth in local areas. This would create more housing, services and jobs and retain and grow local populations.

This local wealth generation will help address inequality and devolve economic power to local areas. This builds capacity, confidence and resources within local communities to take on further assets or land.

We demonstrate to government what successful Community Wealth Building looks like through the work of our members. We work to ensure that any legislation empowers communities to expand existing good practice, enhancing existing community wealth building and empowering new community acquisitions and development projects.

Discover how community landowners are driving forward Community Wealth Building.

A just response to the climate and biodiversity crises

The twin nature crises of ecological loss and climate change are of central importance to us. We work to highlight and support community-led action on these crises.

We work with a broad range of allies to demonstrate that community landownership and empowered communities can and should be at the heart of our response to the nature crises.

We aim to ensure that large-scale interventions based upon natural capital ventures do not work against the policy objectives of diversifying land ownership, building community wealth, ensuring a Just Transition to Net Zero and furthering community landownership.

We reject arguments that the nature crises requires interventions at ‘scale’ on single large scale landholdings which undermine these policy objectives. Instead, we need to work at landscape scale but collaboratively and across multiple landholdings as many of our members and colleagues on the European mainland do.

Discover how we are fighting for a just response to ecological crisis and how our members are restoring Scotland’s biodiversity and fighting climate change.