The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: New rules for land management and sale

The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 5 November 2025 and will now become law, bringing big changes to how land is managed, sold and leased. For management and sale, large landholdings (1,000 hectares or more) are affected, and community engagement will be a legal obligation. For leased land, there are changes to rules around agricultural tenancies, and models for two new kinds of rural lease will be published by the Scottish Government. Here, we focus on the first two areas – management and sale – with leasing to follow in a separate update.

Although the Scottish Parliament has approved the Bill, no date has been set yet for it to come into force.

Land management plans

Owners of large landholdings will have to publish a five-yearly land management plan (LMP) and engage with communities and tenants on the LMP’s development. LMPs will include information on:

• The ownership structure
• The owner’s long-term vision and objectives for the land
• How the owner engaged with communities and tenants, and how that influenced the LMP
• How the owner is complying with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code and the deer management code of practice
• How the owner is contributing to net-zero emissions targets, adapting to climate change and increasing biodiversity
• How the owner will have regard to any Local Place Plan (if one exists) – these are plans prepared by community bodies under planning legislation.

More detail will be set out in regulations to be made by the Scottish Government in due course, which could add to this list, but the above points will be included as a minimum.

A new post of Land and Communities Commissioner will be created to oversee community engagement.

The maximum fine for non-compliance with the new Land Management Plan requirements will be £40,000.

Community requests for leases and crofting

Owners of large landholdings will have to give consideration to a reasonable request from a community body to lease the land (or part of it) or turn it into a croft (if it is in a crofting area). This does not mean the request has to be agreed to, but the owner must not dismiss it out of hand. It is likely an owner will be expected to explain their decision.

Sale of large landholding

The Bill creates two separate restrictions on sales: pre-notification of sales to the community, and possible forced lotting. Although they both apply to large landholdings, both will not always apply, and if they do then each regime will have to be followed separately.

Various kinds of non-commercial transfer will be exempt, e.g. gifts, divorce settlements or transfers between group companies. Landowners can also apply for a quick decision against lotting if the wait would cause them financial hardship.

Community right to buy: pre-notification of sales

This restriction applies when a large landholding or part of one is going to be sold. The Bill does not specify any minimum area of land, so in theory this could apply to the sale of a few square metres of extra garden ground, or a minor boundary adjustment. However, the Scottish Government has power to specify excluded transfers in regulations to come, so these could give an exemption for transfers of small areas by the time the new rules come into force.

Currently, communities can register an interest in buying land, but off-market sales could prevent them from acting in time. Typically, a community won’t start the process unless a sale is imminent, and if the property isn’t publicly advertised, they may miss the opportunity. The new rules aim to give communities enough notice to organise and register their interest.

When a landowner wants to sell a large landholding, they will have to apply to the Scottish Government, which keeps a list of interested parties. Upon receiving an application, the Government will notify those parties, the local Council, relevant community councils, and National Park Authorities, and will publish the intended sale online. There is then a 30-day pause, which can be extended to 70 days if a community expresses interest. If no community interest is registered, the sale can proceed. However, the Bill does not specify how quickly the Government must publish the sale, potentially delaying the process beyond 70 days.

Lotting of large landholdings

As a separate requirement, if more than 1,000 hectares are being sold together, the Scottish Government can tell the landowner that the property must be broken up into lots rather than sold as a whole, if they decide that lotting is in the public interest. The landowner must apply for a decision on whether the property has to be lotted or not. At the moment it is not clear whether this application will be conjoined with pre-notification.

The Scottish Government will then instruct a report by the Land and Communities Commissioner to inform their decision-making. A decision must be made within six months.

“Public interest” includes (but is not limited to) the desirability of the following: achieving more diverse ownership of land, including more community ownership; furthering sustainable development; securing more community-owned energy; advancing community wealth building; and ensuring there is enough affordable housing and workspace for employment.

There is no restriction on who can  buy the lots, but the pre-notification rules (mentioned above) will make it easier for communities to make a bid ahead of others.

Composite holdings

Rural estates are sometimes owned by different, but related, people or entities, but run as one. So there need to be rules about when two or more smaller holdings are treated as one large landholding. This will happen when they are contiguous (within 250m of each other) and the owners are “connected”.

Who is connected? This is a lot trickier than it sounds. Firstly, companies are connected with people with significant control of them under company legislation, and other companies in their group. Where no companies are involved, the rules become much harder to understand. The connection depends on “control”, defined with reference to the Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land (RCI), a recently introduced regime to promote transparency of landownership.

Why the RCI was chosen to define “control” is not obvious. The purpose of the RCI is to ensure the public can know who is truly in control of an area of land when the title deeds do not tell the whole story – for example, a farming partnership where the younger generation has been brought into the business after the farm was acquired, and the title deeds still show only their parents as owners. Drawing connections between two adjoining landholdings is not what it was designed for, and there may well be further detail still to come in regulations as the Scottish Government begin to look into this deeply ahead of commencement.

How we can help

If you’d like advice on how these changes could impact you, please get in touch with Tim Macdonald or a member of our Rural team.