…the blog and website of Andy Wightman
This is the third in a series of blogs analysing the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill 2024. In this blog I want to begin an analysis of the impact of the intervention powers (Sections 2 and 4) in the Bill by
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Following my first blog on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, I will be following up with others including having a look at transfers of land of over 1000 ha in extent over the past few years to assess how the
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Reader of this blog will be familiar with Highland Titles and Wildcat Haven Enterprises. The latter, with the financial support of the former, took legal action against me for defamation and lost. Last year, I reported on the demise of
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(Pictured above the 4703ha Abergeldie Estate sold for an undisclosed sum in 2022) The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on 13 March 2024 (see end of blog for all the documents). This blog is designed
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It is twelve years since I last published comprehensive statistics on who owns Scotland. With a Land Reform Bill going through Parliament, I though it might be helpful to bring the data up to date. There are obvious connections between
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Today, I publish a report analysing large-scale land sales or rural land during 2020 – 2022. The analysis is my contribution to ongoing efforts to better understand the land market and is derived from date collected as part of the
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Today, the STUC has published an open letter to Scotland’s political parties urging them to revalue Scotland’s domestic property in order to provide an accurate tax base for the Council Tax which is still based on property valuations from 1991.
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The Ferret ran a story today about how the asset management company, Gresham House has been taken over by US private equity form Searchlight Capital Partners LP. “The Scottish Government’s investment bank gave £50m to a forestry scheme that has
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Introduction This blog introduces my proposals for a comprehensive Land Reform Bill – one that goes far further than existing proposals in reforming Scotland’s land governance. I plan to publish further blogs outlining in more detail the background rationale and
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In this blog I hope to crystallise my thoughts on some of the reasons why current Scottish Government policy on carbon markets is flawed and undermines efforts to tackle climate change. This is a very brief overview and assumes some
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