Many of Scotland's biggest opportunities - and challenges - depend on the decisions we make about land.
Land is essential in providing our food, water and energy. It is key in helping us tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, and it plays a critical role in supporting our communities and businesses, shaping the places where we live and work.
Through my work in research and as a Land Commissioner, I am aware that balancing the various requirements of land to meet our needs involves choices and, because land is limited in supply, it will almost inevitably also require trade-offs between competing goals. It follows that the more data and information we have to inform our choices, the better.
In short, better land data can lead to better decisions, for communities, for businesses, and for policy makers. It will increase understanding of issues and stimulate new ways of addressing issues and ensuring we make best use of a critical resource.
“Through my work in research and as a Land Commissioner, I am aware that balancing the various requirements of land to meet our needs involves choices and, because land is limited in supply, it will almost inevitably also require trade-offs between competing goals.”
In short, better land data can lead to better decisions, for communities, for businesses, and for policy makers. It will increase understanding of issues and stimulate new ways of addressing issues and ensuring we make best use of a critical resource.
The request for better and more transparent land data was one of the key messages emerging from Commission’s ScotLand Futures initiative last year. Respondents from both rural and urban localities across Scotland described situations where no one knew who was responsible for particular pieces of unused land, leaving local people unable to start conversations on alternative uses. The lack of transparency was highlighted as a particular concern for communities when land ownership changes with limited information about new owners or their intentions leading, in some cases, to rumours and worries.
But ownership is only one part of the picture. As we have witnessed this past year, climate change is increasing the likelihood of areas being affected by floods, droughts, wildfires, and landslides. Increased availability and sharing of information on soils, water, terrain, habitats, land use patterns, and boundaries are increasingly important in supporting the type of collaboration and incentives required to minimise and, if necessary, manage natural disasters and protect local communities from their impact.
Another different case is the importance of robust land value data, alongside ownership and land use data, to provide options for land value taxation, non-domestic rates and other fiscal measures. Recent research by the Commission has shown that such information is vital for allowing policymakers to understand how changes in taxation might affect different landowners, sectors and geographic areas, for reducing tax distortions and loopholes, for assessing whether existing fiscal arrangements are encouraging productive land use, and for better evaluating policy impacts.
The Scottish Land Commission has recommended a more complete, joined up and accessible land data system, not as an end in itself but to inform policy, public and private decision making. Ideally land data should be digital. available through a single portal, be in a form that allows different types of data to be combined and used for multiple purposes, and based on a map (cadastral) system. This would allow communities, governments, businesses or researchers are able to explore, for any given land parcel, a range of different issues.
Recent Commission research found that Scotland lags from an international perspective in both the completeness of its existing land data and its accessibility. Countries with more transparent and accessibility land data systems, including for example Estonia and Finland, were found to have increased public trust, improved market efficiency, and support for innovation. The availability of integrated cadastral and valuation datasets has enabled researchers to gain new understanding including, for example, land value uplift arising from public investment and planning decisions and the effect of different ownership structures on development outcomes.
One of the clearest lessons from the international comparison was that governments make better fiscal and policy decisions when they have reliable information on ownership, land values, transactions and land use. In essence, the research suggested that countries that know more about their land are better placed to decide about their future.
The call for a comprehensive Land Information System for Scotland is not new. In a 2023 report for the David Hume Institute and the Built Environment Forum Scotland, Andy Wightman describes how the RICS led a call for such a system in the late 1990s, with a second major initiative (ScotLIS) launched in 2017. The latter has provided a useful and valued portal for searching Scotland’s Land Register but has fallen short of providing a single point of access to the wide range of land data that is available, albeit currently from a range of alternative sources and in some cases at cost and for restricted users only. As Wightman notes, some of the data has been collected at public expense, raising an important question about whether we are getting the greatest possible public value from it.
It is against this background that the Scottish Land Commission is launching DataPoints, a new blog series exploring why better land data matters and what it can help make possible.
Over the next year, contributors from different fields will bring their own perspectives to that question. They will explore how better information about Scotland’s land can help us understand change, identify opportunities and make better-informed decisions about how land is owned, used and managed.
The contributors have been selected to bring different perspectives and new voices and experience into the discussions on land data. The aim is to explore what improved land data can make possible, and where there are still gaps in the information we need. Because better land data is not simply about having more information. It is about what we can do with it, the questions we can answer, the opportunities we can identify and the decisions we can make.
More about the work mentioned in this blog:
Learning from international cadastral systems for transparency, tax, and valuation
A comparative study of cadastral systems in Scotland, the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia and Belgium, exploring land registration, valuation, taxation, transparency and digital land information systems to inform future Scottish land reform policy.
A five-year route to modernising land tax administration – A route-map for Scottish Government
This route-map sets out practical steps to modernise Scotland’s land tax administration over five years, including improvements to land data, property valuation and public sector systems, and opportunities to test future land-based tax reforms.
Launched by the Scottish Land Commission, the ScotLand Futures initiative builds on over 25 years of land reform and asked: What would completing Scotland’s land reform journey look like? And what benefits would it bring? 1,236 People took part from communities across Scotland, and 96% of thsoe people told us that Scotland needs change in how land is owned and used.
