Central is the power that a landowner holds over local land use decisions and the extent to which local communities and other stakeholders can influence/inform those decisions.
This review has examined research related to land ownership concentration in Scotland and in other countries. It has highlighted a number of key themes that have attracted the attention of academics and other commentators, both recently and in previous decades. The benefits and impacts of land ownership concentration on socio-economic development, local governance, and control of resources/assets have been considered in some depth. Central to the examination of each of these themes is the power that a landowner holds over local land use decisions and the extent to which local communities and other stakeholders can influence/inform those decisions. While the research reviewed in this report considers empirical evidence from number of regional and local case studies, there remains potential to explore the links between land ownership concentration (and scale of landholdings) in more depth, across the whole of Scotland. It is this gap in the research that the Scottish Land Commission call for evidence seeks to address.