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Crofters’ body seek new crofts            14/1/13

The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) is urging the Land Reform Review Group to support its call to create 10,000 new crofts.

Fiona Mandeville, vice chair of the SCF said “We have pressed the Scottish Government to set out the policies that will be put in place to facilitate rapid extension of the crofting system. This is based on a fundamental belief, not only within SCF, that in the Scottish context crofting is the model best placed to deliver the emerging policy goals for agriculture and rural development. Review of land reform in Scotland should reflect these policy goals and so we have asked the Group to support our request.”

The Land Reform Review Group, chaired by Dr Alison Elliot with support from vice-chairs Dr Sarah Skerratt and Prof James Hunter, has been appointed by Scottish Ministers to identify how land reform will, amongst other things, ‘enable more people in rural and urban Scotland to have a stake in the ownership, governance, management and use of land, which will lead to a greater diversity of land ownership, and ownership types, in Scotland.’

Ms Mandeville said: “We want to see more people on the land; more families benefiting from a stake in Scotland and being able to take care of their own part of it. The current financial climate creates an opportunity like never before for public bodies to create new crofts for the many people who aspire to live and work in rural Scotland, and we must seize this opportunity.

“The vast majority of these crofts will provide a new, cost-effective means of caring for large areas of public land, but we see no reason why the private sector cannot play its part in realising this vision too, and the Scottish Government should consider land reform legislation to help enable this.”