Submission from the Community Land Advisory Service in Scotland (CLAS Scotland) to SCVO
30 th September 2014
1.
Introduction
CLAS is a third sector advisory service established in Scotland in 2011 in implement of a recommendation of the Scottish Government’s Grow Your Own Working Group. Our function is to work with community groups and with landowners (both public and private sector) to broker, and to overcome technical obstacles to, agreements for community land use for growing and like projects.
The following are two areas for reform which I consider should be drawn to the Smith Commission’s attention.
2.
Community Rights over Land held by Reserved Public Bodies
The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill, which is currently before the Scottish Parliament, proposes in Parts 3 and 5 to introduce new rights for communities to make participation requests and asset transfer requests to certain public bodies which are listed respectively in schedules 2 and 3 to the Bill. An asset transfer request might be made by a community group seeking to take on ownership, tenancy, use or management of an area of ground from a relevant authority.
Participation requests may prove a useful mechanism for communities seeking to take over the maintenance and planting of public open spaces.
However, in each case, the list of public bodies is (and, as I understand it, within the current legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament must be) limited to bodies whose functions are devolved. This has the result that the new rights will not be available in relation to the very significant land holdings in Scotland of reserved public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence or
Network Rail. Whatever the final shape of the devo-max settlement, it seems unlikely that full power in relation to such bodies will be devolved to Holyrood. Therefore I think that a more nuanced approach is needed to ensure that communities in Scotland have the same rights to seek asset transfer from, and to seek to engage in public service outcome improvement processes with, reserved as well as devolved public bodies. In relation to asset transfer from reserved bodies, it can be noted that this would bring the rights of communities in Scotland into a comparable position with the existing rights of communities in England and Wales. Communities south of the border already

have the “Right to Contest” conferred by Part X of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act
1980 (as amended), however this Part of that Act does not extend to Scotland.
3.
Devolution of Ordnance Survey
The functions of Ordnance Survey, the GB national mapping agency are reserved (Scotland Act 1998 schedule 5, Part II, Head L, section L4.) This means that the accuracy and currency of the official mapping of Scotland is controlled from Southampton. As I understand it, Ordnance Survey are currently required to operate as a Government Trading Fund, meaning that they do not receive funding from central government but instead must pay their own way by charging for the products and services they provide.
Ordnance Survey’s large scale mapping is critical to the understanding and management of land rights and obligations in Scotland. It underpins the Land Register of Scotland and is used by every local authority, by major landowners such as Forestry Commission Scotland and the Crown Estate, and by agencies such as SNH and SEPA. The mapping provides the common playing field upon which different datasets of land information held by different bodies can be combined and compared.
My personal view is that Ordnance Survey currently do a very good job, but not all land professionals share that view (see, for example http://stuartjross.com/blog/ ). However, as a point of principle, I consider that it should be the Scottish Parliament and not the UK Parliament which in future has political control over the quality of the mapping of Scotland and how it is resourced.
John Glover LL.B DipLP
Scotland Community Land Advisor
Community Land Advisory Service (CLAS)
51 Gorgie Road, Edinburgh EH11 2LA
0131 623 7058 john@communitylandadvice.org.uk
www.communitylandadvice.org.uk