Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4 was adopted in Scottish Parliament on 11/1/23. This document sets national planning policy, and provides 10-year plan for how Scotland should develop. One of our action research objectives is to develop the overlaps between town planning and land reform, and we’ve been working away at this but haven’t provided many updates here. It is time for a (quick!) update on some of our policy work over the last year.

In 2022 we took our insights from Clyde Valley and applied them to the NPF4 consultation response, in the interest of all of Community Land Scotland’s members. You can read our consultation response here. There is huge range of points we advocated for, in the interest of creating a fairer Scotland through land use. We are particularly pleased with the strong support in the adopted policy for repopulation and for Community Wealth Building. Policy 25 states that proposals that build community wealth, and which are community led and owned will be supported. This is excellent support for communities and a great step forward in integrating planning and land reform priorities. We think this is the first national planning policy in support of community ownership!

We have also been busy with the Land Reform Act Consultation. This important legislation is meant to introduce meaningful changes in how land is owned and used in Scotland– but the proposal from Scottish Government is for this to only apply to rural areas! We are advocating very strongly for all the proposals to apply across Scotland. Land reform is for all of Scotland’s communities. You can read our member’s briefing here.

Get in touch if you have any questions about our policy work.