July 7, 2010
Have your say on the Right to Buy
It may not be the formal review of the Land Reform legislation that has been called for, but at least it’s an opportunity tell the Minister, Roseanna Cunningham and her colleagues on the Rural Affairs Committee what you think and whether or not the legislation is working well. If you haven’t been contacted by the UHI research team and you want to have a say, please do so by July 9th.
A team of researchers are undertaking a study for the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs and Environment Committee into how the Land Reform Act is working. This research will lead to a report to be presented to the Committee at the end of the summer. The researchers wish to gather the views of community land groups on the legislation.
The team includes:
- UHI Centre for Mountain Studies: Dr Calum Macleod (leading the study);
- UHI Centre for Remote and Rural Studies: Dr Issie MacPhail and Tim Braunholtz-Speight;
- Rural Analysis Associates: Sarah Allen and Davie Macleod;
- Derek Flyn, crofting lawyer.
The researchers want to gather the views of community land groups on the “community right to buy” and “crofting community right to buy” provisions in the Act. They want to hear from groups that have used the Act, or tried to – and those who have purchased land without using it. The research examines:
- the current extent of use of these provisions;
- barriers to their more widespread use;
- the wider and indirect impacts of these provisions;
- proposals on how the provisions or their implementation might change in future.
You may have recently received an invitation to participate in an online survey for this research. The team would like to emphasise:
- the deadline for completion of the survey has been extended to Friday 9th July
- even if your group didn’t make any use of the Act, or very little, your responses are still valuable to us. One of our aims is to find out whether or not the Act had any impact on groups that didn’t formally use it to acquire land – so “no impact on us” responses are important. And in this case, the survey will probably only take about 5 minutes to complete!
- please answer everything in the survey that you can – but don’t feel you have to answer every question if time, or your recall of some of the details of the process, doesn’t allow! Everything you can say will be much appreciated.
If you would like to participate in the survey but have not received an invitation, or if you have any other queries about this study, please contact Tim Braunholtz-Speight on tim.braunholtz-speight@inverness.uhi.ac.uk