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

4. Findings

4.1 Largescale community landownership today

At present, 34 largescale land assets (over 500ha) are owned by 29 community organisations . These assets were acquired between 1908 and 2024, with all but two coming into community hands over the past thirty five years, from 1992 onwards (Table 2).

^{Table 2- Largescale community-owned estates}

4.2 Largescale community land acquisition over time

Figure 1 illustrates the number and hectarage of largescale community acquisitions per year over the past 35 years, while Figure 2 shows the cumulative trend.

What these graphs display is a relatively stable upward trend in both acquisitions and hectarage, punctuated by two periods of significant increases. Table 3 divides these periods into five segments, based on significant trends in acquisition over these periods. Period A (1992-2004) was prior to any legislative support for community land ownership but still resulted in an average of almost one acquisition per year of relatively large areas. While it may be expected that the increased provision of dedicated funding, support and legislative mechanisms for community ownership across Scotland would have increased the trajectory of largescale community asset acquisition, the rate of change remains largely similar in periods C (2008-2014) and E (2017-2026), with a similar average number of annual acquisitions but for, on average, smaller assets being acquired.