Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland

The motion

That the Parliament welcomes the report that has been written by Poppea Daniel for Community Land Scotland, Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland, which examines the state of transparency in land ownership as part of a larger study that is being led by Transparency International; notes that the report formed the basis of a presentation at the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty in Washington DC on 20 March 2018; commends Ms Daniel on her rigorous research and for the innovative approach to present a so-called traffic lights system to explain how well Scotland is doing in comparison with best practice on the five key themes, Land Registry Structure and Information, Access to Information on Land Information and Control, Legal Entity Registry and Information Collection, Access to Information about Legal Entities and Responsibilities of Land-owning Entities; understands that, despite a long history of land registration in Scotland, there are critical gaps between what is publicly accessible and what is actually available; believes that, despite recent developments, such as the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 and the commitment by the Scottish Government to increase land ownership transparency in the Programme for Government 2017-18, there remains little progress in this area; considers that the current system of accessing the most basic of land information is problematic, disjointed and expensive for citizens; regrets what it sees as the ongoing failure to deliver a comprehensive and accessible Scottish land information system, and notes the previous calls on the Scottish Government to follow the lead of the UK Government and open up the registers and commit to a freely-available, transparent suite of open data on land and property.

No recorded vote on this motion. Most motions are never debated, and many that are debated are agreed without a division. Vote records are published from 2011.

Green 5 Lab 3 Ind 1

Party shown is each supporter’s party when the motion was published.

No contribution in the Official Report cites S5M-11827 by reference.