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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Background
1.1 In the late 1990s, a broad-ranging review by the Land Reform Policy Group, chaired by Lord Sewel, examined the policies and other measures needed to remove the land-based barriers to the sustainable development of Scottish rural communities.
1.2 Two over-riding factors were seen as needing to be addressed. First, it was argued that a more diverse ownership base and a reduction in the concentration of ownership and management arrangements, at local level, were appropriate means of engendering sustainable development. Diversity in this context is taken to mean greater diversity in private, public, partnership, community and not-for-profit ownership. Second, it was argued that there should be increased community involvement in the way that land is owned and used 'so that local people are not excluded from decisions which affect their lives and the lives of their communities'.
1.3 After due consideration, the group reported in 1999 in A Vision for the Future (Land Reform Policy Group 1999), which set out its aspirations for change:
- more local involvement, greater commitment and accountability by private landowners;
- more scope for community ownership and management of local land where sustainable;
- more scope for releasing land for housing and local development where sustainable and secures the retention and, if possible, the expansion of fragile rural communities;
- more scope for smallholdings supporting a wide range of land-based and other economic activity;
- about the same level of ownership by public bodies, but with more local involvement and accountability and more employment of local people;
- more local involvement and accountability and more employment of local people by non-Governmental organisations who own land in rural Scotland;
- outdated and unfair feudal arrangements swept away;
- conditionality of land ownership where appropriate to reflect modern circumstances;
- a more constructive approach to problem cases, including those relating to the foreshore and the seabed;
- more definitive and broad-brush information readily available about land ownership;
- more information readily available about beneficial owners and about public support relating to land;
- better integration of policy for rural land use at national level;
- more integrated planning of rural land use at local level;
- more community involvement in decisions about rural land use;
- more public access on a responsible basis;
- more scope for diversity of agricultural tenancy arrangements;
- simpler and cheaper arrangements for resolution of disputes between agricultural tenants and their landlords;
- wider opportunities for tenant farmers to diversify;
- greater protection for those who own property built on leased land;
- more sustainable crofting communities;
- more local involvement in and accountability for crofting administration;
- much simplified crofting legislation and administration;
- more (or at least not fewer) active crofters,undertaking a wider range of land-based and other economic activity rather than predominantly agriculture.
1.4 Since that time, what has been described as 'a suite of measures' has been put in place to deliver land reform, with a view to removing the land-based obstacles to sustainable development. Some of these measures required new legislation and relate to specific changes such as the abolition of feudal tenure; others were aspirational and were hedged with qualifications such as 'where this can be sustainable' or 'if possible'. This suggests certainty about underlying principles, but less certainty about outcomes and impacts, alongside recognition that the geography of impact and outcome is likely to be strongly shaped by the current and spatially variable structures of land ownership.
1.5 Relevant legislation was identified as:
- the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003
- the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003
- the Abolition of Feudal Tenure (Scotland) Act 2000
- the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2004
- the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004
- the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003
- the Crofting Reform etc. Act 2007
1.6 The research was also required to take into consideration the non-legislative measures introduced to support land reform in the above fields, and to note intersection with other policy domains across government.
1.7 In the course of the Land Reform Act's passage through the Scottish Parliament, the government gave a commitment to report on progress with the suite of land reform measures at least once in four years and, in relation to some of the aspects of legislation such as the new tenancy legislation in farming, it was asserted that there was a need to report more regularly than that. The first report to the Scottish Parliament was presented in 2004 and this study will inform the process of providing an updated report in 2008.
1.8 This research was undertaken with recognition that it is too early in the implementation and development of many of these changes to fully evaluate their long-term, cross-cutting and cumulative impacts, but that a review of the necessary considerations should be undertaken. Further, it is recognised that there is a need to identify the potential indicators that might be used to monitor the various strands of land reform and their interplay. 2
Aims
1.9 The overarching aims of this project were to:
- undertake an initial assessment of the impacts of land reform;
- establish the data and analyses which are currently or potentially available;
- to advise the Executive (now Government) about research and monitoring, including indicators, which would be necessary for a fuller monitoring and assessment of land reform impacts.
1.10 These were to be pursued with consideration of the additionality arising from the reforms and the costs of implementation. The study was expected to fall into two parts:
- scoping to establish the data needs for a full study of the socio-economic impacts of land reform and an appropriate methodology on which to base the analysis
- exploration of impacts to date and the key issues for future monitoring and evaluation.
1.11 It was intended that this research would be undertaken largely through desk-based research and contact with primary stakeholders and it should inform how a more detailed assessment of the impacts of land reform could be undertaken in the future.
1.12 This report outlines an approach that provides an over-arching methodology and existing sources of evidence in relation to six arenas, in which land reform has taken place, are explored. In each arena, the existing knowledge is reviewed and the key issues for ongoing and future monitoring and evaluation are elaborated, using an indicators approach.
1.13 The major limitations of the extant data on the impacts and outcomes of land reform were clear prior to the project. The emphasis throughout has been to develop a robust methodology to frame an effective and comprehensive evaluation of land reform measures but, at the same time, to design a framework that could accommodate an even broader suite of measures if so desired.
1.14 Contemporary rural policies such as the new Scottish Rural Development Plan have already elaborated a wide-ranging set of indicators for the evaluation of the plan measures (Scottish Government 2007). Such an approach exposes the absolute necessity of establishing a baseline against which changes in indicators can be measured. In the absence of a baseline, the selection of indicators is necessarily based on what is available rather than what is desirable and such compromises weaken the value of indicator-based studies.
1.15 Two further issues framed the adopted approach. First, land reforms have been introduced at a time when many other socio-economic policies have been working in a similar direction. For example, local involvement in nature conservation has been promoted widely through Local Biodiversity Action Plans ( LBAPs), and community involvement in land purchase has been supported through the work of the Community Land Fund in HIE, endogenous rural development has been promoted actively within the LEADER programmes and through a range of other initiatives. Consequently, the association of effects evidenced in indicators of socio-economic impact with specific land reform-related causes is extremely difficult, at least when dealing with aggregate datasets. There is a constant state of flux in policy design and implementation and scope for different policies and instruments to interact. Teasing out the relative impact of different measures is extremely difficult when the mood music of rural policy has been changed across such a broad front.
1.16 Second, land reform measures range from those that are operationalised 'across the board', such as the reform of feudal tenure, to those that provide a new menu of opportunity to landowners or communities to take advantage of particular provisions and change the ownership, use or tenure of land. Whilst an across-the-board measure can be monitored readily at aggregate level, other measures based on voluntaristic uptake demand a much more spatially focussed approach at community level, or even at the level of individual land holdings. Consequently, whilst it might be possible to offer some limited data on aggregate effects of across-the-board policies, the elicitation of the effects of voluntaristic measures can only be undertaken at the appropriate spatial scale.
The study team
1.17 The inter-disciplinary study team comprised a sociologist (Blackstock), a cultural geographer (Brown) an agricultural economist (Moxey), an agriculturalist/rural development expert (Grieve), a farm management expert (Cook) and a rural economist (Slee), each of whom took responsibility for a particular arena of reform. Additional support was given by a sociologist (Dilley).
References
Land Reform Parliamentary Group (1999) A Vision for the Future, Scottish Executive; Edinburgh
Scottish Government (2007), SRDP Indicators (accessed Sept 2007)
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/07/20145359/12
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