Who Owns Scotland 2025

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 level analysis of who owns Scotland, how much they own, the types of legal structures involved and the top 25 landowners in 2025. The report also also tracks the pattern of landownership over time. This blog is merely a brief signpost to the report whose key finding is the now well established trend of fewer and fewer owners owning more and more of Scotland.

Read it here.

It is only 16 pages long.

The first good statistical record we have of landownership was published in 1874 by the government. The Return of Owners of Lands and Heritages Scotland 1872-1873 provided an account of the names and addresses of proprietors of land outside burghs of over 20,000 population.

The second data point is 1970 when an Aberdeen University geographer, Dr Roger Millman published The Proprietary Survey of Scotland. the exercises was funded by the Countryside Commission for Scotland, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, the Scottish Landowners’ Federation and two academic funders. The data and maps from this study were later deposited in the National Archives of Scotland and formed the basis of John McEwen’s book, Who Owns Scotland first published in 1979.

Then in 1996 I published my own book of the same name and have been monitoring the changing pattern of landownership since then with the basic information published on my Who Owns Scotland website.

I now know the ownership of just under 77% of rural Scotland and the pattern (though not the ownership) of a further 5%. The report I publish today contains the analysis of 7872 records abstracted from my database as at 31 December 2025.

At a high level, the pattern remains little changed from the past 50 or more years with 83% of rural land held by private entities, 11.3% by public bodies such as Scottish Ministers and Scottish Natural Heritage, and the remainder by not-for-profit groups such as community bodies and environmental and educational organisations.

The core distinguishing element in Scotland’s pattern of landownership has always been the very concentrated pattern of ownership by a small number of owners. This stands in stark contrast to the rest of Europe. This contrast is mainly explained by Scotland’s law of inheritance whereby children have no legal right to inheritance land. Across Europe by contrast, children do have such a right and so over the past 250 years or so, large holdings have been split up in to much smaller ones as each generation inherits the land. This has, in turn led to a strong co-operative culture in the Nordics, France and elsewhere whereby small landowners have established powerful co-operatives.

Since the survey of 1874, this pattern of concentrated ownership (half of rural Scotland was then owned by just 118 landowners) has been very slowly changing with more and more (though still very, very few in absolute terms) owners owning more and more of Scotland. This trend continued until some point between 2005 and 2010 (I have not yet established the exact date).

In 2012, 440 owners owned 50% of the privately-owned rural land, 989 owned 60% and 3161 owned 70%.

Certainly from this point onwards the long slow but steady reduction in concentration evident since 1874 goes into reverse. Statistics published in the 2024 report reveal 421 owners owning 50% and similar reductions at 60% and 70%.

Today, the 2025 report reveals further concentration over the past year with now just 408 landowners owing 50% of the privately-owned rural and, 877 owning 60% and 2413 owning 70%.

The graph at the top of this blog shows this trend with the red (50%) and pink (60%) bars showing the declining number of owners since at least 2012.

This trend has been driven by existing owners acquiring more land either by buying neighbouring land or (and more commonly), by financial investment companies such as Gresham House and others building portfolios of landholdings across Scotland. This is being driven by the economic returns and favourable tax status available from forestry and the growing speculative market in carbon offsetting and carbon credits with companies such as Oxygen Conservation and others acquiring land across Scotland. Neither of these two examples owned any land in Scotland ten years ago.

Despite the professed desire by Scottish Ministers to tackle Scotland’s concentrated pattern of landownership, nothing meaningful has been done to do so. If it had, then we would see published plans with timelines and targets. We have neither.

Instead The Scottish Government and the City of London Partnership Agreement 2026 was signed in January 2026 and follows earlier agreements in promoting and encouraging “green and sustainable finance”.

It is largely the financialisation and commodification of Scotland’s land by London based institutions that is driving the significant and long standing trend of re-concentration of landownership.

Scottish Ministers need to decide whether their priority is the interests of the City of London Corporation or of Scottish land reform for the people of Scotland.

Scotland is going backwards when it comes to tackling the uniquely concentrated pattern of privately-owned rural land. When I first published statistics in 1996, I fully expected that over time this concentration would slowly be diluted. Instead, it has increased with fewer and fewer owners owning more and more land.

There is an election in May but I am not holding my breath for any answers.