Calum Macleod and Nicole Busby: The devil is in the detail over future Scots crofting law

Published on Wednesday 12 August 2009 21:51

YESTERDAY marked the end of the public consultation period on the draft Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill, the Scottish Government's proposed legislative response to the Committee of Inquiry on Crofting, which published its report on the future of crofting in May 2008.

The committee, chaired by Professor Mark Shucksmith, outlined a radical vision, which recommended rebalancing individual crofters' interests in favour of the wider interests of crofting to help to sustain rural communities in the Highlands and Islands.

This is tricky ground to navigate in policy terms, but the proposals contained in the bill indicate that the government appears – on the surface at least – ready to tackle the elephant on the croft; namely, whether crofting's future is to be dictated by the narrowly defined interests of "communities of crofters" or the potentially wider interests of "crofting communities".

Crofting's demographics in the early 21st century are not those of 50, 20 or even ten years ago. Changes to EU subsidy rules have obliterated the economic case for livestock management as a staple of crofting activity.

And in some locations crofters are now a minority, compared with non-crofters in the community. But it is the removal of land from crofting tenure for sale on the open market, coupled with absentee crofters not putting their crofts to purposeful use, which has had the most damaging impact on the cohesion and vitality of crofting communities.

The bill also proposes beefing up the approach taken by the reconstructed Crofters Commission – renamed the Crofting Commission – to regulation by requiring it to take action on absenteeism, "unless there is good reason not to". What constitutes "acceptable" and "unacceptable" absenteeism merits further careful consideration.

While the bill's proposal to establish a new and definitive Register of Crofts seems a sensible step in providing legal certainty regarding the extent and interests in crofts, the heckles of crofters have been raised by the prospect of having to pay a 250 registration fee to complete the paperwork.

Worse still, the proposal to enable a standard security to be taken over a croft tenancy to secure a bank loan is viewed in some quarters a direct threat to the ethos of security of tenure.

Further proposals relate to the thorny issue of "occupancy requirements", recommended by the committee of inquiry as an antidote to absenteeism and "second home syndrome" by tying croft houses to residency.

The bill envisages responsibility for regulating these requirements being held by the local authority in the relevant area, a scenario unlikely to fill these organisations with unbridled enthusiasm.

As civil servants sift through the consultation responses to the Crofting Bill, they are likely to find crofters implacably opposed to the majority of its proposals.

That's scarcely surprising at a time when incentives to croft are in steep decline. However, such views shouldn't obscure the larger truth that, unless the forces of absenteeism and market-driven speculation on croft land are quelled, crofting's future looks bleak.

Equally, the Scottish Government's soft-focus rhetoric about the need to preserve a unique "crofting way of life" should be backed with tangible policy measures, adding substance to warm words.

&#149 Dr Calum Macleod is a senior research fellow at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Dr Nicole Busby is a law lecturer at the University of Stirling.