Meeting of the Parliament 13 June 2018
Yes. Thank you, Presiding Officer.
The regulations introduce important new right-to-buy powers that will provide far-reaching options for communities. Communities will have the right to buy land that is wholly or mainly abandoned or neglected, or the management or use of which is causing harm to the environmental wellbeing of the relevant community. Those are powerful options that are not currently available to communities.
Before the draft regulations were laid, we had to remove some matters from ministerial consideration in determining whether the use or management of land results in or causes harm directly or indirectly to the environmental wellbeing of a relevant community. Those elements were not considered to be related closely enough to the concept of environmental wellbeing.
Environmental wellbeing remains an important component of the regulations and it includes some social considerations where they lead to harm to a community’s environmental wellbeing. However, environmental wellbeing has a particular meaning and we cannot stretch that meaning to breaking point. Some stakeholders—particularly Community Land Scotland—were keen that such issues could be taken into account in determining whether land is eligible. However, rather than trying to fit such concepts into the definition of environmental wellbeing, it is better to explore other options for how we might achieve that. I have asked my officials to look at ways in which that can be done effectively, and that will be done during the next year.
Additionally, we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the regulations that we are discussing, and a report on their effectiveness will be submitted to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee by June 2019.
I met Community Land Scotland recently to discuss the regulations. Although it considers the definition of “harm to environmental wellbeing” to be narrowly drawn, it has given its qualified support to the regulations being agreed to in their current form, given the commitments that I have made to explore other ways in which we can allow issues such as social amenity and social wellbeing to be taken into account.
Those issues will also be relevant in the context of part 5 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, which provides a right to buy for sustainable development, and they will be taken into account in developing those regulations.
It is important to emphasise that, as drafted, the regulations will bring into force valuable new rights to buy. They will provide communities with a powerful new tool to take ownership of land that is wholly or mainly abandoned or neglected or where the management or use of land is causing harm to the community’s environmental wellbeing. If the regulations are not agreed to today, communities will lose that opportunity, so I ask Parliament to support them.