Land Speculation at Camster Burn in Caithness

Scottish Land and Estates has argued in recent years that large-scale landholdings are best placed to deliver public policy objectives associated with woodland expansion, peatland restoration and other large scale projects.

Scale can help of course but it is nonsense to suggest that it is a necessary precondition. What if the few people who own large areas of Scotland have no wish to deliver these public policy objectives? Scale then becomes a barrier.

Small-scale landownership is the norm across continental Europe and large scale projects are delivered by means of the co-operation of these owners. Some of Europe’s largest corporations are co-operatives of small scale owners. Metsäliitto, for example, is a Finnish co-operative owned by 90,000 Finnish forest owners who collectively own around half of Finland’s privately owned forests.

Having said that, if land is owned at too small a scale, it can pose problems. This is one reason why so-called souvenir plots comprising a few square feet cannot be registered in the Land Register and thus those who buy them do not become owners.

Particular problems can also arise when ownership is small scale, fragmented and the owners themselves have no meaningful connection to the land. What follows is a good example of this phenomenon.

THE STANGE TALE OF CAMSTER BURN

Camster Estate is located west of Camster in Caithness. The remaining part of the estate now extends to 426ha and is owned by the son of the original owner, the late John Darmaddy.

In April 1972, John Darmady, the owner of Camster Estate sold 1600 acres of land (now known as Camster Burn and illustrated in map above) to a company called Ideal Citrus Sales (Europe) Ltd.

In July 1972, 225 acres is sold to an Anthony Roberts in Kent, which is then sold to another owner based in Kent as well as to a Ghazi Orfali in the United Arab Emirates.

Later in 1972, Ideal Citrus Sales (Europe) Ltd. sold 1375 acres to Sunningdale Securities Ltd., a company based in Grand Cayman. Some years later much of this in turn was sold to Cutland Properties Ltd. and Property and Financial Syndications Ltd., a company which still exists and is controlled by a Mr Sujan Singh Swani, from Birmimgham.

Property and Financial Syndications Ltd. still owns much of Camster Burn but how much is unclear. Sunningdale Securities Ltd. launched a plan to develop Camster Burn as a tourist village (see image at top of blog). Estate Agents were engaged to market half-acre plots to investors who were persuaded that they could make a handsome return.

The estate was laid out with individual numbered plots which formed part of what claimed to be four development phases (See extract of one of. According to some reports outline planning consent was granted but since the entire site is deep peatland, no such development would ever have been feasible.

Over 2600 plots were demarcated and sold to buyers from across the UK (mainly in the south of England) and abroad (Clare Walker, 26 Warby Street, Campbelltown, New South Wales in Australia bought 177 plots). Some of the land acquired by Mr Orfali in the UAE was sold on to other residents of the UAE and 88 acres was sold to a firm of Estate Agents.

One such investor later wrote how he had been duped into the scam (4.5Mb pdf here). His 2.5 acre plot cost £650 (around £7000 today) and represented all of his savings. Without time-consuming research, we cannot be sure how many people became plot owners, but from the records I have examined it is in excess of 1000. Those that were never sold remain owned by Property and Financial Syndications Ltd. but untangling the complex pattern of ownership would take weeks of painstaking effort. Many buyers like Clare Walker bought multiple plots and no doubt sold them on to further buyers.

Plot sales continued through to 1978 but then dried up before a handful were sold in the 1980s. The last sale of 16 plots from Sunningdale Securities Ltd. took place on 6 December 1989 to an Andrew McGill from Southall in Middlesex.

In 1986, ownership of 78 acres at Camster Burn was transferred to Sujan Singh Swani and in 2012, Property and Financial Syndications Ltd. attempted to transfer what was left of Camster Burn to Mr Swani but the application to register the title in the Land Register was rejected for reasons unknown.

THE FORGOTTEN OWNERS

It would cost around £4000 and a month’s work to track the fate of all these plotsales but we can say something some things for certain.

Many of the thousand or so landowners of Camster Burn who bought their plots in the early 1970s will probably now be dead. Whether, having realised the whole scheme was a scam, they ever thought to include details of their ownership in their will is unclear. Some will have and their successors will now be the owners. Others will not have. This leaves a lot of abandoned and potentially ownerless land (which by default falls to the Crown).

Many of the thousands of owners will still be alive but may well have forgotten all about their ill-advised purchase.

The vast majority of owners will no longer be living at the address recorded at the point of sale and it will be nigh on impossible to trace them without significant detective work.

What we can say for certain is that since 1 April 2003, when Caithness became an operational Land Register county, only one plot (Plot 89), a 5.25 acre plot originally sold in May 1976 has been transferred to the Land Register (see map below) and is now owned in part by a practising GP in Inverness. Any transfer for value since that date would have triggered a Land Register title. It is evident that there is no market in these plots.

THE SOUVENIR PLOTS

In July 1984, James Henderson from Arbroath bought two plots (514 and 515) extending to 2.2 acres. His initial motivation is not known but very soon he entered the souvenir plot market through an organisation called South Angus Survival. Initially he purported to allow plot owners to call themselves the Laird of Camster but the real Laird of Camster objected and, instead, purchasers were told they could call themselves Lord or Lady of Glencairn. In an article in the Herald in 1992, Henderson claims to have sold thousands of plots which at the time were being advertised in Private Eye for £10 each.

These souvenirs plots appear to still be selling. An example of one sold in September 2011 can be seen here. [link] The plot number 3510 suggests that as of 2011, 3510 plots have been sold.

Currently, a company called the Noble Society Association, based in Romania can sell you a number of noble titles from Russia, Italy and France as well including the alleged noble title of Laird of Glencairn. This organisation does not appear to have any association with any land at Camster Burn.

THIS IS A MESS

Having over 1000 small landowners owning 1600 acres of land in urban Scotland is normal and rational. Having that same number own an extensive area of peatland forming part of an important SSSI is problematic for a number of reasons.

Camster Burn is located at the eastern edge of the 5631ha Shielton Peatlands SSSI, one of many Sites of Special Scientific Interest designated across the peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland and protected due to the extensive blanket bog and range of breeding birds such as Red Throated Divers, Arctic Skuas, Dunlins and Greenshank.

The SSSI is currently in favourable condition although there are identified risks from excessive grazing by Red Deer and the spread of self-seeded exotic conifers from nearby plantations. This latter problem is a growing one across Scotland and a strategic plan is being prepared for dealing with this across the peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland.

Although the SSSI is currently in a favourable condition, there may well have to be work undertaken in the future to maintain the condition of the site. Scottish Natural Heritage will be required to take reasonable steps to contact the owners. Apart from Mr Swani who still controls a few hundred acres, this will be next to impossible.

Camster Burn forms part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Area of Conservation, a Special Protection Area, a Ramsar site and the Flow Country World Heritage Site. Given that most of the owners have forgotten they own anything, are dead, or don’t care, this seems a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs.

To return to the opening theme, it is clear that this fragmented and abandoned patchwork of ownership is not in the long term interest of effective management. Time will tell whether it proves to be problematic or not.