The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) has welcomed the recently published SNP manifesto
pledges which respond to the ‘Five Actions for Crofting’ issued by the federation
in the run-
The SCF want parties to target financial incentives, simplify crofting legislation, make crofts available, increase affordable croft housing and deliver crofting development.
SCF chair, Fiona Mandeville, said: "Having issued our ‘Five Actions for Crofting,’ a challenge to all parties at the start of the Scottish election campaign, we are delighted to see that the SNP has taken note and responded with pledges on all we asked for.
Ms Mandeville continued, “It is very gratifying to see that the SNP has responded with pledges to ‘continue to provide public support for the continuation of crofting and to secure thriving crofting communities’ and ‘modernise crofting law and make it more transparent, understandable and workable in practice.’
They will also ‘explore mechanisms to make more publicly owned land available to new entrants,’ ‘introduce a new entrant’s scheme for crofting’ and ‘explore the creation of new woodland crofts.’
“We have already won a huge improvement to the Croft House Grant Scheme and the SNP
are promising to re-
Ms Mandeville concluded, “By presenting just the top five actions that must be addressed by the next Scottish Government we gave a focus and we will be pressing these, whichever party is in government after 5 May.
"We have widespread agreement that by tackling these five areas the Scottish Government can make a real and positive impact on crofting communities and on rural Scotland.”
Crofting Federation welcomes SNP pledge to action crofting priorities
28 April 2016