Who Owns Scotlands 2024

Today I have published what I plan to be an annual analysis of who owns Scotland. The Who Owns Scotland 2024 report is based on an analysis of data from the Who Owns Scotland website as at 31 January 2025.

You can download a copy of the report here.

The analysis confirms preliminary findings published in March 2024 that the ownership of privately-owned rural land is becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This is primarily due to existing (and new) landowners expanding their landholdings either by acquiring neighbouring properties or by building a portfolio of landholdings across Scotland.

In 2024,

• 421 landowners own 50% of the privately-owned rural land compared to 440 in 2012;

• 921 landowners own 60% of the privately-owned rural land compared to 989 in 2012;

• 2588 landowners own 70% of the privately-owned rural land compared to 3161 in 2012.

The public sector has reduced its landholdings by 5.4% since 2012 and now owns 875,543 ha whilst community ownership has grown by 28% to 220,458 hectares.

These findings illustrate the relative ease with which patterns of landownership can change in Scotland’s unregulated open market in land. It is disappointing that over the 25 years of devolution, Parliament has not enacted a programme of land reform designed to enable many more individuals, businesses, social enterprises and co-operatives to own land.

The current Land Reform Bill to be debated in Parliament on 26 March is the weakest and least ambitious land reform bill and will have no impact on the trend identified in this report.

My next report will be in Rural Land Sales 2023 – an annual report following my first one published in February 2024.