Current status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 13 July 2021
To ask the Scottish Government whether it considers that increasing the Scottish Land Fund significantly in the early years of the current parliamentary session will be the most effective way of ensuring that communities can compete for the ownership of land, given that there is an increasing number of wealthy private owners expressing interest in buying land.
We are committed to increasing the Scottish Land Fund (SLF) to £20m by the end of this parliament and the profile for this is currently being considered as part of the ongoing budget.
The SLF provides important support to communities and between 2016 and 2021, 232 groups were awarded a total of £39m. However, it is not the only source of funding available and we would encourage any community to consider all avenues when seeking to fund acquisition.