Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Official Report 659KB pdf

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Scottish Land Commission

The second item on the agenda is an evidence session with the Scottish Land Commission on its current work programme. For the first time in my convenership, I am delighted to welcome to the committee Hamish Trench, chief executive, and Andrew Thin, chair, of the Scottish Land Commission. Good morning to you both.

I will start by asking about the public meetings that you have been holding. What have the key themes of the meetings been? Have the themes differed in urban and rural locations?

That was going to be the first part of my answer, as the themes have been different. As you would expect, in rural Scotland, the themes have been mainly rural; predominantly, they have been about the balance of power, the use of power and the way in which communities are or are not engaged in decision making, which is a theme that the Parliament has returned to many times. Another theme is rural housing, access to land for housing and access to land for communities to purchase for other reasons, such as amenity.

Interestingly, in urban Scotland, we get asked a lot about rural issues—urban Scots care about rural Scotland and what is happening there, with the same issues, particularly about scale and power, coming up again and again. A major theme that also comes up—although this varies a little bit depending on which bit of urban Scotland we are talking about—is vacant and derelict land. As one might expect, we have a very high proportion of such land in Scotland and many communities resent living next to vacant and derelict sites and want to know and understand what we are going to do about the situation.

The last thing that is common to all public meetings—indeed, it is partly why we hold them—is our being held to account and challenged on, for example, why we have prioritised this or that. That is a good thing and is, as I have said, partly why we have the meetings.

Do you get a sense at the meetings that there is an understanding of what the Land Commission has done up to this point and what land reform actually means for communities? Are people switched on to their rights?

Yes and no. Many Scots are, as you would expect, very well informed and passionate about land reform; in fact, that is probably why they choose to come to the meetings. The fact that many Scots are thoughtful about the issue is, I think, why it has a degree of political weight. After all, the Parliament has returned to it a number of times since its creation in 1999.

However, many people who come to the public meetings simply have an interest in the subject. We use social media extensively, write to all the community councils and so on, and a lot of people come because they are inquisitive, but they are not well informed, particularly about what is happening in urban Scotland. People understand that in rural Scotland there are issues with the big estates, community ownership and so on, but many urban Scots do not recognise that land reform is of huge social and economic importance to them, too. We have to deal with that and bridge the gap.

I can see that. How will the discussions between you and the public at the meetings inform the Land Commission’s work?

We actually find the meetings very useful in taking the temperature of local issues and understanding how they are playing out on the ground in different places. The experience that we take back informs the work that we are putting together on, for example, land ownership. Some recommendations that we made last year on community ownership were informed not just by our research on the matter but by discussions in the public meetings, and the same is true of our forthcoming research on land ownership.

Our urban engagement, in particular, links very strongly to our work in partnership with SURF—Scotland’s independent urban regeneration network—on community engagement in urban areas and land use decision making. Over the past year, we have done some work with Young Scot and SURF on how people feel able to engage with decisions that affect their surroundings and their place in urban centres. A lot of what we take from the meetings links in with and helps us to shape our wider work programme.

You have said that those who come to the meetings are already interested in the subject. Have you thought about having more meetings to reach into communities and out to people who you feel could benefit from knowing a little bit more about what you are doing and from getting more involved?

We have thought about that a huge amount—

We think about it a lot, too.

I have a couple of points to make on that. First, it is not just the well informed who come to the meetings; as I have said, many people come simply because they are inquisitive. That is really good, but I realise that it is a very slow, drip-drip approach.

As a result, over the next year or two, we will change gear slightly. The public meetings must be in part about our being held to account; that is an important dimension that I do not want to lose, because it is a really good discipline for us to be challenged on our priorities and everything else. However, increasingly, we will make some of the public meetings about specific topics, to enable us not only to target promotion but to capture people’s interest. If you say, “Come to a meeting on land reform,” a lot of people will just yawn, but if you say, “Come to a meeting on affordable housing,” or “Come to a meeting on turning this derelict area into a park,” they will come. You will see that sort of shift in the next 12 to 24 months, but it will be a shift, not a switch; our approach will evolve.

There is intense discussion in urban communities about housing development and derelict land, including as part of the local development planning process. Can you align with those active debates in communities, which often do not look fully at the context and at the development pressures, or opportunities, that present themselves?

We need to keep tapping in through existing networks, such as local authority networks and community planning networks, and work with organisations such as SURF and the Development Trusts Association Scotland, which are already building up networks in urban communities in particular. That work goes beyond our public meetings. We will continue to hold the public meetings, but we need to tap in through some of the existing networks at the same time.

Some of the work that we have done over the past year with, for example, YoungScot and SURF has started to introduce questions about how engaged people are on the issue of land use decisions and what changes they would like and how we can feed that into the work that we are doing on vacant and derelict land or, more generally, on access to land for housing and community facilities.

Let us move on to talk about some of the independent papers that you have commissioned to, I guess, stimulate debate and inform the future work of the Land Commission. The discussion paper on the housing land market says that

“a reliance on the private sector”

has led to

“an under-supply of housing and escalating housing costs”.

Are you in agreement with that statement? I am interested to know how the discussion papers filter through to the work of your organisation and what you are taking from them.

The discussion papers are there to stimulate debate and raise ideas; they do not pretend to provide immediate answers but are there to stimulate the right questions on which we can work with stakeholders.

The housing land market paper is an interesting one. It sits well with another paper that we published on public interest-led development. Together, the two papers have helped to stimulate a debate with local authorities, the housing sector and the planning and development sector on how we make much more proactive use of public bodies to deliver good development in the right place, which is as much about culture change as it is about legislation.

That has fed into research work that we are now starting on land-value capture and land banking. Having stimulated discussion on those issues, we can home in on precisely what the research requirements are and move forward with partners to get ideas and recommendations. For example, we will take forward our research on the housing land market over the course of this year and will expect to come back with some ideas and recommendations for potential reforms of that market in about a year’s time.

You mentioned that the scale of land ownership has come out in your public meetings as an issue that interests the ordinary Scot. Might the commission consider looking at a statutory intervention on that on public interest grounds?

The short answer is that we have a completely open mind about everything, so yes, of course—we would be remiss if we closed our minds to things. We are anxious to be evidence led, so we go into things thoroughly before starting to produce conclusions.

It is worth adding that Scotland sits in an international context and lots of other countries are grappling with these issues, too. It is important that we do not reinvent the wheel and that we look abroad, particularly to the European continent. Quite a bit of our research does that, including on that subject.

09:45  

You said that people in urban areas are interested in what happens in rural areas, too. You also mentioned the continent, where, in quite a lot of countries, people in urban areas have access to the countryside. Is it important that people in urban areas have access to their own natural capital?

People tell us that all the time; there is no question about it. That is why the Parliament has legislated in the past on such things as access rights—to reflect what the people of Scotland want.

We need to work harder at helping people to know how things are done in other countries. Sometimes the discussion is a wee bit insular; we say, “This is how Scotland does it—that is how we have always done it.” However, Germany, Denmark or Holland might do it differently, and our being outward facing helps us to understand and learn from them.

Good morning to you both. I will develop the discussion that the convener started. The discussion paper “Land: For the many, not the few? Limitations on the Scale of Land Ownership” states:

“For many the current concentrated ownership patterns represent a structural inequality in Scotland of significant proportions which arguably limits or acts against furthering the achievement of greater social justice.”

Will you develop the points that are raised in the paper about the experience of concentrated land ownership?

First, I will say a word about how we developed that work. After we published the discussion paper last year, we commissioned research on international experience of interventions in managing land ownership, picking up on the theme of looking at how other countries deal with things, which Andrew Thin spoke about. That was published about a year ago and looked at a range of countries in Europe and more widely. It found that interventions to address public policy issues in determining who can own how much land and the obligations around doing so is common practice in many countries around the world.

We then had a public call for evidence on issues relating to the scale and concentration of land ownership, which had more than 400 responses—that is a good set of responses, with rich information. Tomorrow, we will publish a report resulting from that work.

Has any evidence or information led you to have further thoughts on whether there should be an absolute limit on the scale of ownership? If so, without going into too much detail, can you talk about the views that have been expressed on what the limit should be and why?

We will publish a lot of detail tomorrow and it would be difficult to get through it all now. There is a lot of data.

We can leave it until tomorrow. I did not mean to press you on it.

I am quite happy to deal with the main issue, which is whether the issue is scale or something else. In broad terms, we are clear that it is not about whether people have 5,000 or 10,000 acres but about power and monopoly and about the constraints on power, which are quite normal—if we think about other aspects of the economy, we do not allow oligopoly or a monopoly to develop; we have constraints. It is unlikely that a blunt tool—such as saying that the limit is 5,000 acres or whatever—would deal with the issue, because it is not about the number of acres but about power. Therefore, we need to think about the issue in a more intelligent way—that perhaps sounds a bit unkind, so in a more thoughtful or subtle way. Just setting arbitrary limits is unlikely to deal with the issue.

On the general issue of power, which you have highlighted several times, some argue that what matters is how the land is managed, not who owns it, whereas others say that what matters is who owns the land because, in the end, the landowner can say no to anything. Has much of that dialogue come up in urban and rural Scotland?

It has. We will both answer the question, but to put it crudely, the issue is about power, and power is about ownership—it is important to recognise that those two aspects cannot be separated.

Hamish Trench can add a wee bit.

In the evidence that has come to us in the past year and in the discussions that we have had in public meetings around the country, it has been clear that ownership and the use of land are inextricably linked. That goes back to the decision-making power that ownership conveys. For us, the two aspects are closely linked.

This is the final question that I will pose. Has rural depopulation come up as an issue in relation to power? That connects to our convener’s question about housing and goes into a lot of other economic issues.

The issue comes up in public meetings, particularly in the north of the country but also in urban Scotland. People are anxious about what they perceive as depopulation, often in the past.

On the whole, Scotland’s population is rising, so we must not get the issue out of proportion. However, if someone owned a large area of land, which gave them the power to determine whether houses could be built, jobs could be created or anything else could happen, they could have power over what happened to the population.

The work that we are doing on housing and development relates directly to the challenge of depopulation and rural repopulation in particular. Our work has two angles in relation to housing—one workstream concerns reducing constraints around ownership to ensure the release of land in the right place and at the right price, and the other concerns how we ensure that land values shape the situation effectively and do not prevent development from happening in the right place, where it is needed.

Two issues are being confused, as there is a difference between access and ownership. I agree that the first land reform act, in 2003, provided access, and that was a huge success.

With ownership comes responsibility. You are not quite saying this, but you are implying that landowners are responsible for the depopulation of Scotland—perhaps you will give me clarity on that point, but that seems to be your direction of travel. You seem to suggest that, by exercising power inappropriately through their ownership of land, landowners are somehow responsible for depopulation in areas that are being depopulated. Notwithstanding that I am a farmer and a minor landowner—I declare that interest—I find that implication offensive to the landowners I know, and I am surprised to hear it.

I presume from what you say in your recommendations to ministers about willing buyers and willing sellers that you foresee the end of that approach for the exchange and purchase of land. Do you seek to control that process?

I make it absolutely clear that I certainly did not and would not say that landowners are responsible for the depopulation of Scotland. I said that, if someone owned a large amount of land and had as a consequence power over housing and employment, they could have power over population and depopulation. How that is exercised is another matter. There are instances throughout history in which landowners have contributed to population growth and population falls.

You use the phrase “throughout history”. How far back are you going? Are we not taking evidence on the basis of today?

I am not going back anywhere; I am simply making a logical point about what could happen if someone had such power. That is the only point that I am making.

I repeat that Scotland’s population is broadly rising in almost all parts of the country.

Yet you somehow imply that the power that land ownership gives to landowners is being improperly used.

Let me be clear—I am not implying one way or the other; I am simply saying that the power exists. I made an analogy with other parts of the economy. Where monopoly power exists, we have to decide whether we wish to regulate its use.

Obviously, you are considering very important questions relating to economic participation, but I want to go back to a conventional economic argument around economic productivity, if you do not mind. Perhaps that is a bit odd coming from me. Are you looking at economic productivity from land and what opportunities there might be through more diverse ownership models? Is that an issue, or is the current system the most economically productive one that we can have?

We would not assume that the current system is necessarily the most productive system. In the objectives for the commission’s work, we have deliberately put a strong emphasis on productivity alongside diversity and accountability in land ownership and use. Our sense of productivity is strongly about economic productivity, but it is also about the wider public value that we get from our land. There are ideas about the social, cultural and environmental value that we get from land, alongside the economic value.

Whether in urban or rural Scotland, we should increasingly be open to questioning the model of economic productivity to get more out of land use. Elements of that have certainly come through in the evidence that we have taken over the past year, particularly in respect of the scale and concentration of ownership, economies of scale and potential different models.

On the back of John Scott’s comments, I, too, am a bit concerned that landowners’ power to influence rural depopulation or otherwise has been highlighted. Is that significant if we consider the powers that local authorities have through their planning policies to indicate where housing is or is not allowed, or local authorities’ investment in economic development? Are they not far more significant when it comes to rural depopulation or housing than landowners deciding whether they should have houses?

It is very clear to us that the system requires all those parts of the jigsaw to play their part in order to deliver housing where it is needed. There is no question but that the planning system has a crucial role to play. In work that we have done over the past year, we have identified that there are questions about the role that planning plays in shaping land values and the proactive role that we can play through planning to make things happen more quickly. It is clear from the evidence that ownership plays a part in that, as well. We have to match up the willingness and the ability to release land in the right place, the planning system and the right land value approach.

Which is more significant: local plans that local authorities put in place or barriers that landowners put in place?

I am not sure that I can answer that question. I am aware of many sites that are zoned for planning that are not being built out. It is clear that there are other constraints beyond planning.

For the record, I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I own a non-domestic property in the Outer Hebrides, which is situated in an estate that is subject to a community buyout attempt. That is at a sensitive stage.

I turn to the SLC’s strategic priorities for 2018 to 2021. We know that the remit is to build on existing land reform legislation and the work of the land reform review group. Four priority work areas have been identified, one of which—agricultural holdings—comes under the responsibility of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. The remaining three areas are land for housing and development, land ownership, and land use decision making. How are the commission’s strategic priorities decided? Which areas were considered but not included?

10:00  

I will have to try to answer that question, as Hamish Trench was not present until the latter stages.

The board was established in December 2016. We conducted a large number of public meetings all over the place; a lot of people came, and a lot of them had their own priorities. Out of all those, we distilled four, which we then discussed with the Government. There were a lot of people who undoubtedly would have liked us to focus on other things, but we have to prioritise.

In considering those priorities, will you give consideration to reserved matters as well as the potential impacts of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, if that happens?

Yes.

Will the guidance and codes of conduct be sufficient to deliver real progress on the ground in areas such as promoting a culture of inclusivity, collaboration and accountability?

We do not see land reform as primarily or exclusively a legislative matter; fundamentally, it is a cultural shift that is needed here, and that is why we have put so much emphasis on developing protocols and so on.

We do not know the answer to your question, but we think that we should find out what it is, which is why we are going to do this. What we do know—I was very much involved with this activity—is that, when we have put in place codes of conduct, guidance and so on for agricultural holdings, the landlords, land agents and tenants in that sector have responded well, and many in the sector are saying that they are in a much better place now than they were three years ago. We know that it can work, but we need to find out whether it will work everywhere and in all circumstances. We might well be back here in a while to tell you what we have found out in that regard.

That is good to hear, particularly given the evidence that we took in the run-up to the land reform legislation in 2016.

The Scottish Land Commission’s programme of work from 2018 to 2021 states:

“The Commission’s role combines leadership and non-regulatory culture change with statutory functions to review and advise on legislative and policy change.”

A moment ago, you said that your main emphasis was a cultural shift, but your role as defined by the Government appears to be

“to review and advise on legislative and policy change.”

Where is the balance in that respect? What you have talked about is essentially a cultural shift, but that emphasis appears to be different from the information that I have seen.

I am not sure that that is what I said. I said that there needs to be a cultural shift in Scotland, and that is the message that has been brought home again and again at public meetings. That is what people are looking for. How that shift is delivered will depend on a number of factors, some of which will be legislative and some of which will come down to codes of practice and all the rest of it. At the moment, we just do not know how easy it will be to achieve that. I do not have the legislation in front of me, but the Land Commission’s job is not only to advise Government but to advise and produce guidance for others, which is where the protocols come in.

What key changes were made to your programme of work between September 2017 and March 2018?

I think that you are referring to the fact that we updated our programme of work at the start of the financial year, but that reflected the point that we had reached. Obviously, 2017 was the commission’s establishment year, and we were putting together the staff team, doing the initial work and getting the initial priorities under way. Having done that, we had much more of a focus on the key issues that we were going to address from March 2018 onwards, which is the date from which the programme of work was updated. That has led us through our work over the past year on international experience of land ownership and land value taxation, historical experience on land value capture and the research and recommendations on the community right to buy, which came out last November. Those issues were the main focus of our work over the past year.

Was the initial programme of work overambitious, given that it was reviewed after only six months? Have the skills and experience of Scotland’s research community been insufficient in carrying out the specified work? Are there any gaps in knowledge or understanding?

No. We have always made it clear that the programme of work will be updated perhaps every six months or so. We have not been rigid about that, because it is really important that we are able to adapt and evolve our thinking as we learn where the priorities lie. I would expect us to publish a revised programme of work roughly every six months—and I would stress that word “revised”. It will not be a new or different programme of work, but one that evolves with circumstances and, indeed, as a result of what people are telling us.

So there will be a rolling update every six months.

How will the commission approach areas in which there is little or no consensus on a way forward? Can stakeholders be compelled to engage with you?

No.

Well, that was clear. Will the commission highlight examples of poor land management and ownership practices and identify individuals who are considered not to be working collaboratively with either the SLC or local communities?

We see that as part of the broader picture of supporting good practice in land rights and responsibilities. That will involve not only identifying good practice and establishing expectations with regard to normal, reasonable and expected behaviour, but being willing to call out examples of bad practice and other poor examples wherever we see them. That is very much our approach to, for example, the protocols on community engagement, and we are offering support and advice to ensure that good practice becomes the norm.

With agricultural holdings, Parliament has asked us to put in place a very specific process with codes of practice for allegations of breaches and so on, so there is already a process for, if you like, calling out bad practice in that respect. We will have to see what we can learn from that, but the process might well have wider applicability. We just do not know yet.

I am a bit naive when it comes to current jargon. What do you mean by “calling out” examples of poor or good practice?

If there is a code of practice for, say, conducting a rent review and someone does not follow it, a breach of that code might be alleged to the Tenant Farming Commissioner, who might decide to investigate and might, if he so wishes, publish his findings.

Right. So you would expect to highlight good and bad practice—or would it just be bad practice?

The process that the Parliament has put in place relates to alleged breaches of the code.

I see.

Speaking more widely, we are deliberately promoting examples and case studies of good practice not just on the agricultural side. For example, there is a wide range of support with regard to community engagement, including examples and case studies of good practice. After all, that is the most effective way of sharing what should be normal.

I think that that should be the recommended approach. The dissemination of good practice is probably much more valuable than the highlighting of bad practice, but that is just a personal point of view.

Let us turn our minds to the land use strategy and its relation to your work. You know this already, but I point out just for the record that the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 specifically says that the commission can review and recommend changes to the strategy. I did not know that previously, but I—along with the previous committee convener Graeme Dey and other committee members in the previous session of Parliament—have taken a keen interest in the issue. Do you plan to review the effectiveness of the land use strategy as a whole? I should say that this issue has also been highlighted by Scottish Environment LINK.

We have no plans for a formal review of the land use strategy, but we are continually talking to stakeholders and the Government about the implementation of the current one. A strong theme that came across in many discussions that we have had over the year is that participation in land use decision making is a core area.

Whether it is in public meetings or some of the other research work that we have done, undoubtedly we see an opportunity to improve the ways in which people—particularly in local communities—are able to engage in decisions about land use and land use change in their surrounding area. We see a particular role for the land use strategy in improving regional and local decision-making mechanisms; it should bring to a head choices and understanding about land use choices, trade-offs and priorities and ensure that a wide range of views influences and feeds into our understanding of those decisions.

This question goes back to the programme of work. In relation to either the land use strategy or your wider remit, have you looked specifically at how we use land in the battle against climate change? For example, recently, there have been a lot of concerns about driven grouse moors and protection of peatlands. Do any of those issues form part of the commission’s considerations?

Not specifically. At the moment, we have no plans to do specific reviews in relation to those subjects, but they are integral to a lot of our other work—particularly, the issue of community involvement in decision making. In many of the public meetings in rural Scotland, people tell us that they would like to participate in decision making about, for example, the management of grouse moors. Some of those people want to participate because they are anxious about climate change, wildlife or jobs—you would expect that. We are developing protocols, guidance and good practice case studies—all the things that we have just been talking about—around community involvement in decision making. If we can make that happen, people will feel a lot more comfortable. It is the sense that people are unable or powerless that is frustrating them.

Before I ask my questions, I declare that, jointly with my wife, I have a 3-acre registered agricultural holding.

I will use that to illustrate some of the issues around owning land, particularly in a rural area. If I were to sell those 3 acres of hill grazing, I might get £5,000 for them. However, they are an adjunct to a rural house in an area where many householders want to keep horses; therefore, they probably add £20,000 to the value of the house. Those figures are arbitrary and not to be questioned; it is the principle that is important. If I could persuade the local authority to provide planning permission for four houses, the land would probably be worth £250,000 or thereabouts. I hasten to add that the local authority’s policy that means that that is an extremely distant prospect—it is not going to happen.

That brings me to the role of councils in relation to land, housing and business development. In particular, I am talking about vacant and derelict land—not my holding, which is neither. Has the commission been working with councils? There is a view that the price and availability of land is, to some extent, determined by how much land councils choose to designate for housing developments in local plans. If I was simple-minded, I would say that the price would halve if they designated twice as much land, but, as Adam Smith would remind us, it is not that simple. What has the commission been doing with local councils to tackle vacant and derelict land? I am not trying to open up the broader issue of land ownership, which we will come to later in our questions.

We are speaking with a number of councils, particularly on those issues and in relation to vacant and derelict land. That leads into the broader questions of land value capture and the role of public bodies in brokering development.

From our point of view, there are two strands. One is the effective use of the planning system in zoning sufficient land and the role of planning policies in shaping land values. The other equally important strand is in the role that public bodies, including local authorities, can play in using their power of brokerage and leverage to help good development happen. That goes back to the proactive role that local planning authorities can play in relation to funding infrastructure and unlocking development in marginal sites.

10:15  

With regard to vacant and derelict land, there are some great examples of local authorities making things happen at sites in challenging circumstances. The role of the group that we have put together—the task force, which is working with the Government—is to learn the lessons from those examples and to make some changes to the system, whether in regulation, finance or planning, so as to unlock development at more sites across the country.

I go back to the fundamental role that public bodies play in proactively brokering development. Internationally, it is quite common for public bodies to play a role in land assembly, in facilitating infrastructure investment through land value capture and in returning sites to the private sector for development. Indeed, they can take a stake in a joint venture approach to development. Those are the kinds of approaches that we think we should be exploring further.

This is a slightly cheeky question, but are you aware of any significant housing development that has not attracted objections from adjacent people?

I am not sure that I could answer that.

Let me turn it this way. The councils clearly have a set of tools at hand and, although communities want more housing, they do not want it next to them. Is that the sense that you get from your consultation and your meeting with communities? There is that tension between the status quo for people who are in an area and the need to develop land.

The short answer is yes—that is the sense that we get. At many public meetings, we hear from people who are desperate for more land to be released for housing. At quite a few public meetings, people turn up and tell us about a housing development that they think is wrong and ought to be dealt with by the Land Commission. In some ways, that takes us to the fringes of our remit. Planning decisions are a democratic matter for local authorities. Local authorities not only have to decide about individual cases; they have to produce strategic plans that will meet the needs of their communities.

I would not say that land reform is separate—it is clearly integrated—but it is an additional aspect. I accept that people will always come to our public meetings hoping that we might be able to solve their particular angst.

Let me steer us back to vacant and derelict land. How are we doing on that? Are measures such as compulsory sales orders proving to be of value?

Last year, we put together a proposal for a compulsory sales order mechanism. I understand that there is a commitment to bring that into legislation. It is important to say, however, that that is designed only to tackle a subset of sites. In most cases in that subset, ownership is a barrier, perhaps with the owner holding out for an unrealistic expectation of value. A compulsory sales order mechanism would shift the balance in the negotiation.

As you will be aware, there are many other sites where the issues are simply to do with financial viability and cost, including the cost of remediation of vacant and derelict sites. We are currently working with Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Futures Trust to break down the vacant and derelict land register into what are essentially baskets of different types of site. There will be very different solutions at different sites. There will be a subset of sites that are marketable and that can go through normal market channels. Many others will be suitable for community-led regeneration and green infrastructure; others will require public intervention in order to bring the sites back into use.

I hear what you are saying, and I cannot disagree with a word that you have said, but how are we doing in practice on vacant and derelict land?

We are reducing the register by about 1.3 per cent a year at the moment. At the current rate, it would take us 77 years to complete that.

So, there is room for further improvement.

There is significant room for transformation.

I had a constituency case in which there was a derelict house—in fact, it was perhaps even more than derelict—in a village. It took us 10 years to get effective communication with a trust based in Panama, which would deal with us only if we communicated in Spanish. That cost my office expenses budget quite a lot of money. The outcome was successful, I hasten to add, although we still do not know who actually owned the house.

I do not want to open up the issue of ownership, but where ownership of vacant and derelict land is uncertain, particularly in urban areas, do we have the tools to help us?

I understand your point that ownership and establishing the identity of the owner remains an issue for some sites. The work on transparency of land ownership and the register of controlled interests is designed to help to address that, but it remains an issue for the moment.

According to the programme of work, certain activities are scheduled to start in 2019. Can you provide an update on the research into land assembly, the housing market and land banking? If that work has not started already, when will it commence?

It is an on-going process. The work that we have delivered over the past year takes a historic view of the land value capture experience and looks at how we can learn lessons from the many previous attempts to do that, particularly in the 20th century. We have moved on to work with the Scottish Futures Trust to model options for land value capture that might work in different markets around Scotland, recognising the different geographies and land values. We will be publishing some initial work on land value capture in relation to the Planning (Scotland) Bill.

In the past couple of months, we have commissioned a review of land banking. That is an initial piece of work, because it is important that we understand what we collectively mean by land banking and the different types of things that we call land banking. We also need to understand the implications of land banking and how prevalent it is. That work will look at rural towns and communities as well as the main urban context.

Those are the building blocks. In the coming year, we will schedule a more formal review of options to improve the operation of the housing land market. We would expect to come back with recommendations on that next year.

My next questions were on the parameters of that work, but I think that you have already answered them.

I want to go back to one of the points that emerged from Stewart Stevenson’s question, about the challenges that local authorities face when they have identified a suitable site for housing and new development through the planning system and are trying to assemble the right up-front infrastructure—schools, facilities for active travel or whatever—to make the community sustainable from day 1. Given your thinking around what happens elsewhere, in relation to land value tax and other tools, are there ways in which we can ensure that new communities can be built so that they are sustainable? It is true that we need more housing and more communities in Scotland.

In my region, there are several stalled sites that were earmarked for development years ago, but that development has never happened because the up-front money is not in place to get them up and running.

A more proactive approach to land assembly is key. That brings together several bits of work, including the work on land value capture, which is looking at how we use some of the value inherent in land to make that infrastructure investment happen, and the work on the role of public bodies and the potential for joint ventures and different approaches.

Recently, we published some work on how public authorities in Germany and the Netherlands approach those issues. In other countries, it is quite common for public bodies to play a more active role in the land market, either by stepping in to assemble land where necessary or by forming joint ventures with private developers to do that, using the land value to provide the infrastructure and then either selling the land on or continuing to play an active part as a joint venture partner. There are several approaches that we are keen to explore further, not just around land value capture and the potential role of land value tax, but around the proactive role of public bodies in land assembly mechanisms. I fully expect us to model and test some of the different options for land assembly measures over the next year.

This morning we have had quite a lot of discussion on the scale and concentration of land ownership. What has the discussion with the Scottish Government on those issues been like? Are you pushing certain reforms? Which bit of Government are you talking to? Are you talking to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Kevin Stewart, in relation to planning and local government or Fergus Ewing in relation to the rural remit? How do you engage with the Government and what response are you getting to the issues?

Maybe we should both answer that question. On how we engage with the Government, we report mainly to Roseanna Cunningham, and to Fergus Ewing for the agricultural stuff. That is the formal line of reporting, and there are all the usual regular meetings and briefings and so on.

Because of the nature of the work, we also cut across into other areas on issues such as land value tax, for example. We have managed to establish communication channels with other parts of Government. It is quite early days in dialogue on the specific points that you raised, but I will ask Hamish Trench to tell you exactly where we are.

In the programme for government, the Government asked us, first, to look specifically at community ownership, and we reported on that in November last year, and, secondly, to look at issues associated with scale and concentration of ownership, which we will report on this week. Those were the two headline asks from the Government.

As Andrew Thin has said, our lead relationship is with the land reform policy team. At the operational level, we have good connections across regeneration and planning, local taxation and other Scottish Government teams.

That is clear, and the recommendations on land concentration and ownership will be out this week.

The other strand that you mentioned is community ownership and where we are with the proposed community ownership delivery group. Do you know when that might happen? Which interests will be reflected in that group?

I will pass that to Hamish Trench.

The Scottish Government is taking the lead in setting up the community ownership leadership group, and I fully expect it to be up and running in the next month or two. It will deliberately draw together representatives from sectors such as land ownership, community development and planning. That group needs to be cross-sectoral to bring together the different interests that are needed, and it follows the direction of travel that we set out last year around community ownership needing to be a normal option for communities across Scotland, and for it to be seen very much as a part of regeneration and community planning.

Where are you with the research into charitable and trust status in land ownership?

This year, we have been carrying out some initial scoping work to understand the nature of land ownership by trusts. It is important that we separate private trusts and public and charitable trusts, as each has different issues. We have been doing some work and taking some legal advice on the background and context of such trusts and will publish a paper for discussion within the next few months. That is very much intended to stimulate discussion with the land ownership sector and the professional advisors to understand the issues and the relationships in charitable and trust status ownership.

Does the commission expect that the recently enabled community right to buy abandoned, neglected and detrimental land will have a significant impact on the amount of land in community ownership? Will there be a difference between land that is owned in rural areas and land that is owned in urban areas?

It is partly too early to tell, but I suspect that that power will be used for relatively few specific sites. It is a last-resort mechanism.

Going back to our recommendations on community ownership, what we would like to see as the norm, and what is necessary for community ownership to become more widespread and a normal part of the picture, is a negotiation between a willing buyer and a willing seller. That is by far the most productive, constructive and likely route to securing more community ownership.

How does the absolute right to buy in that instance fit with the presumption for negotiated transactions between a willing seller and willing buyer?

It is well established that both are part of the picture, and it is right that backstop measures are in place to provide communities with the ability to take action when they need to. However, that should not prevent normal practice being about willing negotiations.

10:30  

On the proposed land value taxation, a recent paper found a lack of evidence that land value taxes deliver the theoretical benefits that are attributed to them, so how is that issue progressing?

I think that you are referring to the work that we published on the international experience. About 30 countries in the world use some form of land value tax, and it is important that we learn the lessons from that. The research pointed to three areas that will be taken forward this year as the next phase of work on land value tax.

The first area is vacant and derelict land. We do not know, but we want to investigate whether a land value tax could have a part to play in unlocking a subset of vacant and derelict sites. The second area is broader and relates to land value capture, particularly in relation to the housing market. We will consider whether land value tax has a role in a long-term approach to land value capture and reinvesting land value in making development happen. The third area is whether land value tax has a role in increasing the diversity of land ownership. Those are the three areas that we have identified to explore further. We will set up an expert working group this year to take an overview of that land value tax work.

When do you expect the report to be delivered?

We expect the group to report at about this time next year. It will be a substantial bit of work over the coming financial year.

I have a supplementary question on the issues that Finlay Carson raised about the willing buyer, willing seller approach. Is there anything in place to deal with the situation when a willing buyer has plans to retain an empty or derelict building and use it for public good whereas the seller wants to dismantle the building and use it for something that is not necessarily in line with the public good? Do we need to look at that? As you can probably guess, I am thinking of a particular example. When something is not in line with the regeneration of a town or land is not being used for the public good, where does that leave communities that want to develop an asset for the good of the community rather than other interests?

In those circumstances, the community right to buy for sustainable development is likely to offer more scope and be a more useful mechanism. The right to buy abandoned and neglected land is clearly and deliberately designed for very specific circumstances and probably does not address such use issues.

Could that be looked at? In your public engagement sessions, have issues been raised about situations in which people have very different views on the use of a particular site?

That has come up, but it is very early days and we simply do not know how the right to buy for sustainable development will work. Very few cases are developing, and there may well be a legal challenge to it, anyway. So, we will have to wait and see. As Hamish Trench said, the vast majority of community acquisitions have taken place through negotiations between a willing buyer and a willing seller, and I think that that will continue to be the case.

The international work that we did on the issue shows that, in a large number of countries across Europe, it is the norm for communities to own or control in some way land in and around settlements. As we try to move towards that kind of pattern, I anticipate that most landowners will be willing sellers. That is part of the cultural and behavioural shift that needs to happen. I think that it is helpful to highlight what normal looks like in many other countries.

I am not quite au fait with all of this but, particularly in Ayrshire, where I am from, there are a lot of brownfield sites in villages and towns that are ripe for redevelopment and housing. Are those sites available under the community right to buy as well, or is the community right to buy just for rural areas?

No—it is very much for urban land as well. Currently, many of the applications coming to the Scottish land fund are for urban sites, buildings or urban plots. The right to buy and the wider support for community engagement are focused on urban as well as rural sites.

My limited experience of Scotland suggests that there might be more brownfield sites where there is neglected and derelict land than there are in rural areas. Do you have a feel for that?

Sites that are officially on the vacant and derelict land register are generally urban or town based. For the community right to buy, there is a broader definition of abandoned and neglected land. I suspect that there is a quite a wide variation across rural towns and communities as well as in urban centres, and the community right to buy is certainly designed to apply to both.

Forgive my not knowing this, but is there a standard definition of neglected and detrimental land?

I will not try to remember it; I would have to refer to the guidance.

Is the definition the same for urban and rural areas, or is it different?

In how the regulations work, the definition is the same, whatever context you are operating in. I refer you to the guidance for that particular right to buy.

I have a quick question on the willing buyer, willing seller approach. It is asserted quite regularly that the existence of compulsory purchase powers as the backstop when there is not a willing seller are often an incentive for a seller to become willing and to engage in the process. Do you have evidence to hand that either sustains or shoots down that assertion? It is one for which I have some sympathy.

It is almost certainly the case that there are instances in which that is true. However, it is wrong to see landowners as unwilling sellers in this instance—that is not the case. The vast majority of landowners in Scotland understand and, so far, have co-operated, which is partly why we have such a large amount of community-owned land already.

In our report on the issue, we tried to set out the fact that we need to refocus, rethink and learn from other parts of Europe, so that, rather than having the types of acquisitions that have taken place over the past decade or so, we have something that is more typical of Europe. Community ownership should not be an end in itself; it has to be a means to an end, and we need to be clearer about the ends that communities are trying to achieve. We can learn an awful lot from other parts of Europe where community ownership or control of land around settlements is the norm. Often, that land has been acquired over the past 200 or 300 years—the community ownership is not necessarily recent. We can learn from that experience and be directed by it. I have seen no evidence to suggest that the majority of Scotland’s landowners would not be willing participants in that process.

Does any of your work highlight the issues that arise where there might be a willing seller but there are liabilities associated with a building or a piece of land? Examples that spring to mind are Ayr Station hotel and the old Stena east pier in Stranraer. The sellers might be very willing, but the liabilities that are associated with those pieces of land are a huge barrier to local authorities or communities buying them. Could that cause problems in the future, and can you suggest any solutions to such situations?

Community ownership might not be the solution in such situations—I want to make that very clear. We have to be clear about the purpose of community ownership. It is not just to take on problems—that would be a mistake. That is partly why we have emphasised the point that it should be not an end in itself but a means to an end. It is highly likely that the solution in the case of Ayr Station hotel, for example, is not community ownership, although I do not know for sure.

A lot of work is going on in that area. The Scottish land fund has been excellent in helping communities to figure out what their purpose, end and capacity are and to work out what is sensible. However, we must not underestimate the capacity of communities. There are some extraordinary examples of communities taking on and successfully developing chunks of land, delivering a great deal more public value out of them than was delivered before and doing that very well indeed.

Could the land fund be limiting communities’ ability to take over such things? I am thinking of properties in town centres that are not being used and that are hindering development. In the case of the east pier in Stranraer, there is a financial burden associated with bringing that piece of land back into manageable use. Is that limiting communities’ ability to take ownership?

It is one factor, but, as we emphasise in the report, the land fund has come along only recently. Prior to that, the vast majority of community acquisitions were privately funded through crowdfunding, philanthropy and so on. We must not lose sight of that very important issue. It would be extremely unfortunate if the public sector started to crowd out private funding.

Clearly, a community taking over something like the pier in Stranraer presents a financial challenge, but, more than that, there is a capacity issue, too. I emphasise that it is horses for courses. We must not see community ownership as the solution to all our problems.

John Scott has some questions on land use decision making.

Before I ask those questions, I should say that it is not the intention of the people in the Ayr constituency, which I represent, to see the Station hotel turned over to community use—at least, not as far as I am aware.

Can you update us on the baseline research to establish appropriate measures and indicators of community involvement in land management decision making? Has that work been implemented?

The very simple answer is that, because we are currently doing that work, it has not yet been implemented. Our recent focus has been on publishing the protocol for community engagement and getting the support for good practice in place. We are conscious that, in two years’ time, we will be asked to advise the Government on the effectiveness of the guidance on engaging communities, and that is what the baseline measures are being put in place for.

Thank you. What has been the impact of the land rights and responsibilities statements and the guidance on engaging communities in decisions relating to land, and what impact are they expected to have? What further clarity does the commission expect to give on implementing the land rights statement?

It is very early days as far as the impact is concerned, but the vast majority of landowners are well aware that they have responsibilities—indeed, you have said so yourself—and I think that the statement has been helpful in highlighting that. The guidance, too, has been helpful in setting out a clear methodology, but we are still some way from a wide understanding of why the level of awareness is still quite low. We have just produced a protocol on community engagement that builds on that by attempting to provide people with clear and simple guidance on what is sensible. The short answer, though, is that it is still early days.

How does the commission intend to monitor the success of the newly published protocol on community engagement in decisions relating to land? Does it apply equally to private and community landowners, regardless of whether the land is urban or rural?

On the last question, we are very clear that the guidance and expectations apply equally across all types of landowner, whether they be public, private, non-governmental organisation or community. Equally, the expectations are reciprocal on those with responsibility for managing or owning land and those in the community who use the land. It is very much a case of understanding the reciprocal expectations and how such an arrangement should work.

As for your question about how we will measure these things, we have specifically asked in the protocol for examples of good and bad practice to be fed back to us, and that information will form part of our monitoring. We intend to use survey mechanisms with communities as well as landowners and managers to establish an on-going measure of awareness and effectiveness of the guidance.

What kinds of measure did you say you intend to use?

Surveys, predominantly.

Thank you. Can you provide an update on the review of the costs and impacts of fiscal policy in relation to diversity of ownership and land use decision making that is due to commence in 2019?

Yes. That review has not started. In a lot of our work over the past couple of years, we have identified and effectively scoped out a number of issues on which fiscal and, in particular, tax policies have an important part to play. Over the coming financial year, we will pull together a group to look at tax, including—as was mentioned earlier—land value tax, but in the wider context of the existing tax regime. The group will also look at options for change and will try to understand their implications.

Have the specifications and parameters been drawn up and the contracts awarded for that research?

No, not yet.

10:45  

I have a final question. What aspects of economic, social and cultural human rights might be further realised by the commission that are not being, or have not already been, covered by the work programme?

I will have a go at answering that question. We see the human rights framework less as a workstream in itself and more as something that runs through all our work and that provides a frame for and influences much of it. I would say that, in practical terms, economic, social and cultural rights are significantly about rights to housing, employment and so on. The framework has influenced our work on, for example, a compulsory sales order proposal and land ownership. I think that it is a way of framing some of the issues that we are looking at rather than a topic in itself.

Mr Thin mentioned the risk of legal challenge to some of the work that you are doing. Are there any specific or outstanding areas in which you expect such a challenge?

No, not at the moment.

My final question brings us full circle, back to the public. Two or three years on from the land reform legislation having gone through Parliament, do you feel that there is enough straightforward guidance for members of the public who feel that there is a part of their town, village or whatever that their community could benefit from? Have guidance on the processes for helping communities and good practice from where such moves have worked been shared enough? Looking at this from the viewpoint of a resident of a village who might be thinking, “Where do I start with this?”, do you think that that sort of thing needs to be looked at more?

I do not want to imply any criticism of the huge amount of effort that has gone into this. It is a huge challenge. A great many organisations, including not just the Government but NGOs, Community Land Scotland and so on, have done and are doing a huge amount of work on it, and there is an awful lot more information available than there was two years ago. Is there enough, though? I very much doubt it. We all have to continue with this work as part of the cultural shift and the shift in dialogue. This is about not just guidance but expectation, confidence, capacity and a range of different things. With these things, you cannot just flick a switch—they take time.

There is quite a lot of technical guidance out there, but the issue is much more to do with support and capacity. For example, as part of our recent work with SURF, we have been having conversations in Kirkcaldy, Rothesay and Govan about engagement and the options for the communities in those areas.

I emphasise that this is a long process. It is a case not of going in with a bit of technical guidance on how to use a particular right to buy but of having a more fundamental discussion with the community about their expectations and how they can be realised through a whole set of measures, some of which are to do with land reform and some of which are far broader than that.

Okay. As my colleagues have no more questions, I thank you for your time.

10:48 Meeting suspended.  

11:27 On resuming—