Land

The Scottish Land Fund has awarded the Langholm Initiative charity £1 million towards the purchase of 10,500 acres of Langholm Moor in the south of Scotland, which would see the local community creating a vast new nature reserve.

The charity hopes to buy the wildlife-rich and culturally important land – jointly valued at £6 million – from Buccleuch Estates, in what would be southern Scotland’s largest community buyout.

The Scottish Government's Community Land Team are holding a series of Community Rights to Buy events across Scotland.

Community Rights to Buy are legislative tools that enable communities to acquire land or buildings.

The workshops will cover three of these tools.

Rural projects that protect the environment and mitigate the impact of climate change will share £34 million.

A total of 472 businesses will benefit from the latest award of Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS) funding, which promotes environmentally friendly land management practices and looks to protect and enhance Scotland’s natural heritage.

This brings the total committed to rural businesses under AECS since 2015 to more than £211 million, benefiting almost 3,000 applicants.

Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing said:

The Scottish Land Commission are asking young people to tell them what they hope for the future of Scotland’s land.

Working with ice cream architecture, they’re holding workshops at high schools and youth councils across Scotland to find out what our young people want to see Scotland look like in the years ahead.

The Scottish Land Fund has awarded £1,586,398 to 11 community ownership projects.

A community development company on the island of Colonsay, population 135, has been awarded £390,000 to buy land to build affordable housing and to create a site for affordable business units. The money will be used to buy two areas of land around the settlement of Scalasaig as part of a project to build homes for island residents.

In our Hands: Community Ownership in the South of Scotland

Full programme

The South of Scotland is now one of the fastest growing areas for community ownership in Scotland and communities are purchasing a wide range of assets including shops, estates, forestry, harbours, community centres, business and retail space and land for housing – to name but a few.

Scottish Forestry has launched a new spatial data hub providing access to information helpful to foresters, land managers, developers, teachers, students, researchers and others. 

The Open Data hub offers 70 geospatial data sets and is downloadable for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

The Scottish Government has started early engagement on the development of Scotland's fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4).

The National Planning Framework is a long term plan for development and investment across Scotland.

On 5 November 2019, the Scottish Government published its proposed phased work programme for reviewing permitted development rights.

It is accompanied with a Sustainability Appraisal, commissioned by Scottish Government, which sets out the likely significant environmental, social and economic effects of options for change.

An upcoming Scottish Rural Action conference will kick start a 'rural movement' to make rural Scotland's voice heard.

Representatives from rural Scotland's communities, businesses and organisations are invited to attend the free event taking place from 26 to 27 February at New Lanark Visitor Centre, the renowned world heritage site.

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