[obowersa]

TL;DR: Sometimes!

So its a little more complex and a little bit more nuanced.

The mechanism is part of the land reform policy and called the ‘Community Right To Buy’.

Ahead of time, a community body (which has a legal definition) can register an interest in buying qualifying land. All of these notes of interest are available from the registers of scotland and has to be renewed regularly/etc.

At the point that a landowner indicates to the land register that a piece of land is to be transferred (which could be due to public sale, or a private sale or direct transfer), the bodies with notes of interest are notified.

This then kicks off a whole process, including an independent market price evaluation, reviewing of land development/business plans and if that all goes through, final ministerial approval.

It can lead to land being sold at less than the offers over price (scotland has a weird way of doing land/property sales), or for more, depending on if the land transfer was a public sale or a private shift around.

Its not a perfect system and has a lot of flaws, but its worth being aware of the implementation.

[thatguy0900]

So if I want to give land to a friend, I can be forced to sell it if one of these groups have shown interest? That sounds very strange

[obowersa]

At a high level, yes.

However there are a lot of checks and balances to it. Not all land falls under the criteria and there's a lot of requirements around forming a group and the proposed use of the land ( such as being geographically local /etc ).

When I last looked into it, I think there'd only been 2 occurrences of the right to buy happening over a 4 year period.

Which does raise the question on 'Does the act achieve the goals it was setout to achieve' or is it mainly political posturing.

That's not something I can really comment on (nor would I want to).

[markdown]

> That sounds wonderful

There should always be an opportunity for land to return to the commons.