…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
SCOTLAND’S CONCENTRATED PATTERN OF LANDOWNERSHIP CONTINUES TO GET WORSE Today I publish Who Owns Scotland 2025, the second annual report on landownership in Scotland. The first (Who Owns Scotland 2024) was published in March 2025. In addition to a high
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Today I publish my annual analysis of large-scale rural land sales in 2024. It follows earlier reports for 2020-22 and for 2023. One of the key issues raised in the report and in this blog is covered by the Guardian
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The Glengarry Community Development Trust is a dynamic and successful community body based in Invergarry, Inverness-shire. It owns a 37 ha community woodland with a tourism accommodation and firewood business. In 2022, it acquired a further 47 ha of woodland
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Regular readers will recall the defamation case brought against me in 2017 by Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC (WHE) seeking damages of £750,000. The latest news for those of you who kindly contributed to my crowdfunder is that WHE has now
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Regular readers will recall my blog of 21 November 2025 where I expose the growing practice of entering “Implementation of Missives” as the consideration in deeds transferring ownership of land in Scotland. The practice is prevalent particularly in what appear
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On 29 August 2025, the Clan Donald Lands Trust announced that it had received a “large number of offers” for the Clan Donald Estate that was put up for sale in August 2025 (see BBC report here). According to the
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In my previous blog highlighting the £25.2 million sale of Scatwell Estate to Strathconon Estates Ltd, I mentioned a third interesting feature of the sale. You were never meant to know about it. I have been meaning to write this
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As readers may be aware, I run the Who Owns Scotland project. It documents the ownership of over 76% of rural Scotland. The information is updated annually and where there is a change I often need to order a deed
Continue readingI have sent a final briefing on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill to MSPs this morning. After a delay last week, the final session on Stage 3 amendments is taking place today (4 Nov) and the debate on whether to
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Guest Blog by April Cumming April is currently based in Melbourne and works for the Australasian Housing Institute supporting workers in the community and social housing sector. She worked for Malcolm Chisholm in Holyrood from 2011 – 2016. In 2026
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