Owning Scot-Land Policy Workshop 3
Picture credit: © Dafydd Mills Daniel
The third of the Owning Scot-Land workshops took place on Friday 1st May, 2026. The workshop was structured with three paper presentations followed by discussion to highlight particular issues in historical and contemporary land reform debates. A diverse team of experts gathered for the conversation including Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel, Dr David Stuart, Michael Russell (Chair of the Scottish Land Commission), Prof Morag Redford, Dr Laurence Lasselle, Dr Jonathan Hopkins, and Prof Richard Oram.
The first paper was presented by Michael Russell entitled ‘Beyond the Clearances: A New Dynamic for Completing Scotland’s Land Reform Journey.’ He traced a history of land reform in contemporary Scotland, highlighting the three major land reform bills that came into force between 2003 and 2025. Since its founding because of the 2016 bill, Russell defended the ongoing need for the Scottish Land Commission against those who believe it has now fulfilled its function. By conducting consultations that resulted in 1236 online responses, 21 commissioned contributions, and 120 attendees at a public meeting, the Scottish Land Commission discovered that there remains a consensus that land ownership and policy need reform. In short, Russell advocated that the Scottish Land Commission should continue so long as it remains in the public interest.
One of the primary aims of the Scottish Land Commission is to redistribute the concentration of land ownership through legislation, policy, tax, and fiscal initiatives. There has been some movement towards this redistribution since the 2003 Act, including more bodies becoming committed to seeing change and new lotting powers that have assisted community and small-scale purchases of land. However, as Scotland has not had a popular revolution over land as in Ireland, Mexico, or India, the question remains how far these measures will make a real difference to the concentration of land ownership. The Scottish Land Commission’s 2027-2030 strategic plan intends to lay this out.
Russell advocated for a political answer to the problem through evidence-based policies along with recognising the human rights of inhabitants and users of land, with particular attention to those who are being displaced. This point raised discussion around the needs to research and measure depopulation particularly across rural areas as well as to construct mechanisms that enable the possibility of community purchases for larger scale pieces of land.
This discussion led neatly into the second paper entitled ‘Preventing School Closure in Rural Areas: A Scottish Case-Study’ presented by Dr Laurence Lasselle, Prof Morag Redford, and Dr Jonathan Hopkins. They highlighted the problem of how school closure disproportionately affects rural areas of Scotland. 100 of 263 primary schools were closed and 62 of 63 were mothballed in rural areas between 2007 and 2025. Mothballing was a measure introduced to prevent kneejerk reactions to the high costs of keeping a school open, enabling a more considered approach. However, it often merely delays the official decision to close, while the school functionally stays closed from the decision to mothball it. Rural communities thus rarely experience a difference despite the change in policy.
Although the researchers noted that demographic decline typically results in closures in rural areas, they showed the need for further research into identifying why they have happened. By taking a holistic approach that goes beyond quantitative analysis, it will be possible to explore how far closures of schools are related to demographic decline in rural areas and vice versa. Further clarity is also required in relation to how a rural school can be identified through international comparison.
The team also argued that keeping schools open should not rely on community sustainability as the learning opportunity afforded to pupils and staff through them should be emphasised. It was also noted in discussion how further reasons for why there is demographic decline in rural areas would help identify methods of revitalising communities that would strengthen the case for keeping schools open.
The third paper was presented by Prof Richard Oram, entitled ‘De-mythologising the Debate: Environmental History and Land-Use Discourse for the 21st Century.’ He explored the way the myth of Scotland’s natural wilderness has taken shape in public messaging about Scotland’s landscape. He took us through literary influences including James Logan, Alexander McConnochie, and Robert Louis Stevenson and showed how their views were now embedded in messaging about the Highlands. The Cairngorms are thus described as the ‘primeval landscape from which most of our country evolved’ (Cairngorm National Park, 2007).
Oram took issue with this myth because of the way it contradicts history. For instance, he pointed to the creation of davochs towards the end of the first millennium that evidence the ways the highlands were used by communities, supporting most if not all of their economic resources by offering fishing, pasture, meadow, woodland, shielings, arable uses, and fuel. Both archeological and historical records thus indicate that it is not only lowlands but mountainous areas that have been used this way for over a millenia.
The main takeaway from this reality is that the beauty of the highlands Scotland is known for today is not ‘untouched’ nor ‘wild’ but a result of being stewarded by anthropogenic uses. Upper-Strathspey, an area that is usually highlighted as being unsullied by human hands in fact has had five different land uses over the last millennium.
Instead of airbrushing out the human influence on Scotland’s landscape, Oram advocated for a retrieval of it and to use it as a basis for current policy making. The fact that Scotland’s ‘wilderness’ areas hold so much value today is, in part, to the stewardship of previous communities who made use of the land. Learning from this may help us to care for the land of Scotland today. As demonstrated by history, strives to protect Scotland’s ‘nature’ and the environment more generally can work in collaboration with the needs of inhabitants in Scotland. Indeed, it was raised in discussion how ‘rewilding’ is a case-in-point where human interference can directly affect the revitalisation of habitats for environmental benefit. Although the ways human influence has harmed Scotland’s environment should not be underplayed, identifying and stewarding human needs in relation to the land can also be to its benefit.