Chamber and committees

I know that you are not investing in housing and that it is not your interest, but—

Sandra, do you want to come in on that?

Finlay, have you any reflections on that?

Okay. Sarah Madden—do you want to come in?

David, do you have any brief comments?

I have more detailed questions on land management plans that follow the evidence that we have had so far. However, your initial comments are very useful in setting the context.

The committee heard from the Scottish Land Commission that there is a need to include local place plans in land management plans, which means incorporating the built environment planning element into LMPs. Do you have a view on that?

Sandra Holmes, I will come back to you about specific recommendations that the Land Commission has made in relation to LMPs. One recommendation is that they need to refer to local place plans—where those exist, because not all communities have the capacity, the interest or maybe even the population to develop them.

Finlay, do you have any reflections on this issue?

I was going to ask questions about lotting, and we have explored certain aspects of that, but I have a residual question in mind. We are dealing with hypotheticals here, because it is ultimately a ministerial decision, and ministers will look at viability and decide whether it makes sense to lot. It has been put to us in evidence that an outcome of lotting could be that Gresham House or another organisation might see lotted areas of land and say, “This is great—we will just buy these up for our shareholder,” and then, in effect, re-amalgamate land into a single consolidated holding for all intents and purposes. Is that a concern from the other side? Where there is a genuine case for lotting that is in the public interest—perhaps not in commercial forestry but in another setting—do you see the potential for organisations such as yours to, in effect, buy up and re-amalgamate forestry?

Do you see the interests of your clients, in particular those in commercial forestry, as being a version of the public interest? Do they clearly lie within the public interest?