New Scottish land use partnerships

The way that land is owned and used is central to tackling climate change and promoting economic recovery from COVID-19 in Scotland. To achieve the pace and scale of action needed, we must enable more regional-level engagement, decision-making and action.

This is the message in a report to Scottish ministers on the establishment of new regional land use partnerships (RLUPs), to be published shortly by the Scottish Land Commission.

Land use and land-use change are both essential to achieve Scottish and UK climate targets for 2030 and 2045. During the coming decade we need to make significant changes to ensure a just transition to a net-zero economy.

The Scottish Government committed to establishing RLUPs as part of the wider ambition prompted by the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019. The Scottish Land Commission was charged with advising how best to establish RLUPs to ensure all Scotland’s land contributes to meeting climate targets.

The commission has worked with stakeholders on proposals to establish such partnerships, and found strong support among them for RLUPs’ potential.

Scotland’s economic policy already has a strong regional focus. City-Region Deals have focused investment, and Regional Economic Partnerships ensure decisions reflect the varied interests. However, rural land use has sometimes been disconnected from wider economic and spatial planning. RLUPs are an opportunity to better connect land-use planning with wider regional strategic planning.

The commission expects that larger planning authority areas might form a single partnership, while smaller areas in central Scotland should combine into bigger landscape-scale units, along the lines of collaboration already developing to produce the Regional Spatial Strategies required by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019.

This geography means the partnerships will have a good route to local democratic accountability and align easily with other local planning decision-making processes. Land-use planning outside the UK usually operates at a municipal level of government; although Scotland’s local authorities are larger than is often the case in Europe, the case for embedding these functions at a local government level is strong.

Several parts of Scotland have already gone some way towards doing this. For instance, national parks and the south of Scotland, through previous work piloting a regional approach to land-use strategy, have identified opportunities and priorities for land use change, such as woodland expansion. These examples show the value of a clear regional plan that engages people, providing clarity that can secure funding, collaboration and action.

But their role need not be restricted to public funds: RLUPs could be the focal point for the collaboration and governance to draw together finance from multiple sources that will be needed to meet climate ambitions.

While many land-use challenges involved in moving to a net-zero economy are technical – relating to carbon management and emissions reduction, for instance – a just transition also means looking at how the implications can be handled fairly so that the benefits are widely shared. The Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement provides a clear framework for this and should be central to the partnerships’ remit.

We have an exciting window of opportunity to take a more joined-up approach to land-use planning in Scotland – a new land-use strategy will be published in 2021, as will the next National Planning Framework. The RLUPs represent an excellent way of taking that opportunity.

Related competencies include: Environmental management, Land use and diversification, Management of the natural environment and landscape, Sustainability