LAST year they told Holyrood to “be brave” and revolutionise land ownership in Scotland. Launching a new push 12 months on, the OurLand campaign has issued five key targets as it urges MSPs to “be braver” on land reform.
Hundreds of people joined calls for greater transparency, improved access and more responsible ownership last year, sending images of themselves at vacant, disused or fenced-off sites across the country.
This year many have revisited these locations to highlight progress – or a lack of it – after Holyrood passed the Land Reform Act in March. The legislation creates a register of those who own plots and estates but OurLand, which seeks to highlight the “inequalities and secrecy” of land ownership and calls for changes to the tax system, says the law must be bolder.
The National columnist Lesley Riddoch, one of the founders of the campaign, said it will this year tackle “unfinished business” and many of the problems highlighted by supporters last year “remain unchanged”.
Riddoch said: “Scotland’s concentration of private landowners has put the brakes on everything from affordable housing to sustainable communities with locally-owned forests and energy systems, weekend wooden huts and fishing on some of the best lochs and rivers in Europe. Sadly, none of that will change overnight with the Land Reform Act.
“The OurLand campaign is back in 2016 with meetings to discuss our next five demands of the Scottish Government, to showcase the land-related problems that exist and the community solutions that are being forged right now, all over Scotland."
OurLand aims to push MSPs to ensure greater transparency, productivity, affordability, availability and accountability of land. A statement said: “There should be a registry of all land in Scotland and who owns it, and it should not be legal for land to be owned in secret in tax havens.
It went on: “Much of our national wealth is derived from the productive use of land. Failing to use land or preventing its development is against the public’s interest. To discourage unproductive speculative behaviour a modest land tax should be introduced and the tax exemptions on derelict land policy should be ended.
“Ordinary people and small businesses should have a chance of being able to afford land and the public should be able to buy land for public good at a reasonable price. A modest land tax will help manage the value of land and a right for public bodies to buy land not at its speculative value but at its current use value should be put in place. A land tax should encourage more existing landowners to sell on land they are not using productively, provide for equal inheritance of land amongst siblings and increase the number of landowners and diversity of ownership.
“Local authorities, government and other public bodies own and control substantial amounts of land and grant planning permission for others to it. There should be much better democratic accountability for how public land is used, in particular when it is sold, and planning should be reformed to emphasise public benefit rather than commercial profit.”
The launch coincides with the start of the Our Land festival, which runs a one month and includes more than 30 events across the country.
Robin McAlpine, director of the Common Weal think-tank, said: “Progress on land reform has been very encouraging but even when all the legislation passed is fully enacted it still won’t be enough to create a fair balance of land ownership.
"If we don’t do more we will continue to fail, and the impact on Scotland’s economy and society if we fail for another generation would simply be unacceptable.”
http://www.thenational.scot/culture/Our Land Festival Line-Up.21056
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