SEFARI Fellowship to understand changes in demand for largescale community land acquisitions and identify barriers and solutions to new acquisitions

2. Introduction and background

Community ownership of land is an important means of achieving sustainable development and delivering positive social, environmental and economic outcomes. Land ownership gives communities the opportunity to control what happens in their area. It enables communities to deliver local housing, support business development, provide community and recreation facilities, maintain and enhance greenspace, and meet other needs identified by the people who live there (SEFARI, 2025). 

Support for community ownership in Scotland has developed significantly over the last 25 years. Successive legislation has developed mechanisms, funding and support for communities looking to acquire land and assets, from whole islands and estates, forests and woodlands, to buildings and small sites for development.

The Scottish Land Fund (SLF) plays a central role in such acquisitions, funding the vast majority of purchases. In recent years, there has been a reduction in the number of hectares purchased with support from SLF grants, with many communities applying to purchase buildings and smaller sites instead (SEFARI, 2025). In addition, successful largescale community land purchases are unevenly distributed around the country, with concentrations in the Western Isles and Highlands, while the vast majority of local authorities do not contain any. 

The purpose of this research is to understand the reasons behind these chronological and geographical trends, identify any barriers to largescale community land acquisitions and illustrate the potential solutions to overcoming them.

2.1 Definitions

This research considers community ownership of largescale assets. 

The definition of community ownership has largely been streamlined and formalised under legislation as the private ownership of an asset by a constituted membership organisation open to all residents of a ‘community of place’. It may adopt one of a few legal forms, including: Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO); Company Limited by Guarantee; or Community Benefit Society (Bencom), with most also being registered charities. Prior to this legislation being passed, a number of crofting communities took ownership of their land through an organisational structure which limited membership to croft tenants. As this is not open membership it does not meet the official definition of ‘community landownership’. However, we are including this limited number of cases in our analysis as we feel it is important to recognise the role they played in the developing community land movement.

We define largescale assets as any acquisitions of over 500 contiguous hectares. This size was chosen in order to capture most of the crofting estates which form the backbone of this form of ownership, while also taking a pragmatic methodological approach to considering a sufficiently large dataset for analysis.

2.2 Structure of report

The report will first outline the main themes and findings of literature and media reports on the topic of largescale community landownership in Scotland. It then outlines the methods utilised in the empirical research. 

The Findings section illustrates the results of our research, including: the extent of largescale community landownership today, and how and why it developed over time; considering the nature of ‘demand’ for largescale community assets, and what drives (or triggers) it; how and why largescale community landownership differs geographically; interest in largescale community land acquisition which has failed, and the barriers which prevented it; and proposed solutions to these barriers in the expansion of largescale community land acquisition across Scotland. 

This was a short-term, rapid project. While we are confident of our findings, we consider this to be a foundational understanding of the issues focused on, with significantly more research required to comprehensively cover the topic. We state the limitations of this research in the Methods section, while remaining knowledge gaps and required future research are noted in the concluding section, alongside considerations for policy and practice.

2.3 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the individuals and institutions that contributed to this research. This includes those that agreed to be interviewed, circulated and submitted surveys, and offered their views and expertise in the workshop. 

We would also like to thank all of those that helped in the sourcing and interpretation of data, especially Highlands and Islands Enterprise, The National Lottery Community Fund, Community Land Scotland, Community Woodlands Association, and Development Trusts Association Scotland. 

Thanks to the Scottish Land Commission and SEFARI Gateway for their funding and management of this research, and to the Steering Group for their guidance and oversight of its quality. 

Without the help and support of the above, this research would not have been possible.

2.4 Literature and media review

There is limited literature specifically focusing on largescale community land. Sources which do, consider it a solution to issues of monopolised private ownership and its constraints on sustainable development (Danson and Burnett, 2021; Glenn et al., 2019). In the case of one acquisition, media reports boasted that: 

“Ownership will empower the community to lead and control the management and future development of the Estate and enable them to create new, sustainable economic and social opportunities for the benefit of local people” (Stornoway Gazette, 2015).

Many largescale acquisitions were catalysed by a desire to reverse declining populations through investments in employment and local services (Cameron, 2014; Carrell, 2017; Fletcher, 2016). Further, community trusts can be locally “trusted” to act in the common interest, whereas if private landowners advocate for land use change (for example, peatland restoration) local people may question their motives (Helmcke et al., 2025). 

“Inspiration” plays a significant role in expanding the number of largescale community land acquisitions, with successful purchases greatly enhancing subsequent demand (Watson, 2002). Despite this, the number of largescale community land acquisitions has been claimed to be “plateauing” due to growing barriers (The Scotsman, 2023). The nature of these barriers can broadly be categorised as: cost; process; and community.

2.5 Cost

Largescale assets are expensive and finding the funding for acquisition can be a barrier to achieving community landownership. While different options exist for sourcing funding, none are without their constraints and even sourcing information on all current funding models is not easily achieved (MacPherson et al., 2019). 

While the presence of the Scottish Land Fund (SLF) is considered vital and much appreciated, the limited budget of the fund can be constraining, with communities less able to afford the increasing price of land (Carrell, 2020; MacPherson et al., 2021). Indeed, even if one group is successful in receiving funding, it may exhaust the entire year’s budget, thus denying other groups the chance to receive financial support (Elliot et al., 2014). 

Alternatively, community groups can seek to secure mortgages against the asset. However, the price of large estates reflects not just the ‘use value’ or operational profitability of the land, but the additional intangible ‘status symbol’ value, which would not be covered by a lender (Braunholtz-Speight, 2015). In such instances, community groups may go into partnership with commercial or charitable bodies which could ultimately lead to a successful acquisition, but at the cost of influence and authority held by local people over the land going forward (Braunholtz-Speight, 2015; Carrell, 2020). Other community organisations have sought largescale philanthropic donations (Campsie, 2020), but it is unclear what conditions these may have attached to them. 

Increasing land prices have exacerbated these challenges and increasingly put largescale land acquisition out of reach of communities (Helmcke et al., 2025; McMorran et al., 2022; Ross, 2022). A surge in land prices between 2020-2022, partly driven by speculation surrounding natural capital opportunities, has since subsided (Merrell et al., 2025). However, this period of heightened speculation remains important context for understanding the contemporary trajectory of community land acquisition in Scotland, particularly given its impact on communities’ ability to engage with the land market during this time.

2.6 Process

While there have been a number of processes and mechanisms implemented to facilitate community land acquisition, there remain barriers to doing so in practice. A negotiated sale can take a long time and lead to high costs for both parties (McMorran et al., 2018). Amid all these potential delays, the timescale for community bodies to raise funds to conclude a purchase is considered too short for large purchases (Black and Leeman, 2012). Some have claimed that there is more help available for communities in the Highlands and Islands to navigate these processes, with other regions not receiving the same level of institutional support (Mair, 2020). 

In almost all cases, largescale community land acquisition in Scotland relies on the owner’s willingness to sell (BBC News, 2009; Braunholtz-Speight, 2015; McMorran et al., 2018). Larger landed estates were considered more likely to oppose a community buyout (Elliot et al., 2014) and may be wary of entering negotiations where they perceived community bodies lacking in capacity or insufficient business planning (McMorran et al., 2018). Even where negotiations do take place, there can be accusations of secrecy and underhand tactics of both the seller and buyer’s representatives (Gilchrist, 2023; Press and Journal, 2004a). In one circumstance, the seller withdrew from the process even after the community had been awarded the funds for the purchase and was celebrating the imminent acquisition, indicating the extent of the seller’s power in this situation (Stornoway Gazette, 2015). However, there are also instances of willing and facilitative actions by landowners in supporting communities with their often long and difficult journey to landownership (Carrell, 2020; Wilson, 2024). 

The Community Right to Buy (CRtB) mechanism was not considered helpful in this regard, with the 2023 Rural Land Market Insights Report observing ‘that some estate owners prefer to sell privately to minimise perceived interference from any Community Right to Buy option’ (Merrell et al., 2023, p. 13). This was especially notable where community organisations were perceived to not have a realistic chance of buying such a large piece of land, with landowners wishing to avoid this process ‘ruining’ their chances at selling at market value (McMorran et al., 2018). With regard to the Crofting Community Right to Buy, its use has been so limited as to question whether this ‘compulsory right’ is fit for purpose (Wilson, 2025, 2022) .

2.7 Community

The nature of the community itself plays a significant role in successful largescale land acquisition, with larger buyouts more likely to happen where there is sufficient community capacity and high levels of social capital (Elliot et al., 2014; Press and Journal, 2004b). These conditions are often found in the Highlands and Islands where much of the land is under crofting tenure, further enabling buyouts in this region through its relative low cost and usage restrictions. Relatedly, such acquisitions are less likely in the south and east of Scotland, predominantly owing to higher land values, fewer large estates and a greater number of owner-occupied farms (McMorran et al., 2018). 

However, two largescale purchases have been completed in Dumfries and Galloway in the form of two parcels of land forming the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve (Amos, 2022; Carrell, 2020), where it is pointed out that the community faces many of the same challenges as those experienced in the Highlands and Islands (Mair, 2020). There has been other interest expressed in the South of Scotland but no further largescale acquisitions have taken place (Clements, 2020). However, where local divisions or conflict are present, this can not only jeopardise largescale land acquisitions and the ongoing management of community-owned estates but also deter others from pursuing acquisition (Baynes and Campbell, 2024, 2020; Macaulay, 2019). Such conflict has long affected the South Uist Estate, with the disparate nature of multiple townships across this very large estate considered to exacerbate conflict due to the difficulties in unifying the dispersed population (Braunholtz Speight, 2015; McKee et al., 2025; McMorran et al., 2018, 2014). 

These themes provide a basis upon which we conducted our research, seeking to examine, expand and critically consider their specific influence on ongoing demand for largescale community land acquisition.

¹ At the time of writing, a Review of Community Rights to Buy has recently been published. It was not possible to fully digest and integrate its findings and recommendations into this work.