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Chamber and committees

Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland

  • Submitted by: Andy Wightman, Lothian, Scottish Green Party.
  • Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 April 2018
  • Submitting member has a registered interest.

  • Motion reference: S5M-11827

That the Parliament welcomes the report that has been written by Poppea Daniel for Community Land Scotland, Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland, which examines the state of transparency in land ownership as part of a larger study that is being led by Transparency International; notes that the report formed the basis of a presentation at the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty in Washington DC on 20 March 2018; commends Ms Daniel on her rigorous research and for the innovative approach to present a so-called traffic lights system to explain how well Scotland is doing in comparison with best practice on the five key themes, Land Registry Structure and Information, Access to Information on Land Information and Control, Legal Entity Registry and Information Collection, Access to Information about Legal Entities and Responsibilities of Land-owning Entities; understands that, despite a long history of land registration in Scotland, there are critical gaps between what is publicly accessible and what is actually available; believes that, despite recent developments, such as the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 and the commitment by the Scottish Government to increase land ownership transparency in the Programme for Government 2017-18, there remains little progress in this area; considers that the current system of accessing the most basic of land information is problematic, disjointed and expensive for citizens; regrets what it sees as the ongoing failure to deliver a comprehensive and accessible Scottish land information system, and notes the previous calls on the Scottish Government to follow the lead of the UK Government and open up the registers and commit to a freely-available, transparent suite of open data on land and property.


Supported by: Claudia Beamish, John Finnie, Ross Greer, Patrick Harvie, Alison Johnstone, Mark McDonald, Pauline McNeill, Alex Rowley, Mark Ruskell