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Could SNP pull the rug on selling your country home?

By Mark Howarth

ANYONE buying or selling a house in the countryside could soon have to go through an official vetting process under radical plans being considered by the Scottish Government.

A proposal being examined by the SNP-Green coalition could give the authorities the power to veto the sale or purchase of any rural property if it fails to meet a strict ‘public interest’ test.

That could open the door to a crackdown on the number of holiday homes in rural areas and a cap on property prices in such areas to ensure that homes remained affordable for locals.

A similar system to prevent undesirable rural development has been in operation in France for decades. Now the Scottish Land Commission (SLC), which answers to the Scottish Government, has ordered research into the French regime – which gives the state first refusal on all rural sales involving a plot of land – to see if it can be copied here.

Last night there were warnings the strategy would add layers of red tape, delay and expense to the process of moving house.

Scottish Conservative rural affairs spokesman Rachael Hamilton said: ‘This could well add more bureaucracy for those seeking to sell their homes in rural areas when we should be doing all we can to attract people to make rural communities their home.

‘Those efforts are of course hampered by the failures of the SNPGreen government on a whole host of issues – from their ferry fiasco to failing to deliver superfast broadband and centralising crucial services away from rural areas.

‘All too often, the SNP-Green government think they know best when it comes to the needs of our rural communities, rather than the people who live there.’

Sociétés d’Aménagement Foncier et d’Etablissement Rural – known as SAFERs – are regional bodies set up by the French government to preemptively examine land transactions in non-urban areas, including homes in a plot as small as an acre.

Where a deal risks damaging the public interest – typically if it threatstated: ens farmland or the countryside – SAFER officials have the power to buy the property for the state.

They then have five years to sell to a new owner, who will typically be bound by conditions restricting what they can do with the property.

A SAFER can also block a deal if it thinks the price is too high, which often leads to sales being scrapped.

Solicitors are legally bound to refer all relevant deals to officials before completion, but it can take two months to get the green light.

The SLC – a quango set up in 2017 to recommend land reforms to Ministers – has awarded Edinburgh University’s commercial arm a £14,650 contract for research into the French system. The quango ‘The overarching objective of this work is to provide evidence of how the SAFER intervention affects market structure and operation, particularly where promoting diversity, or limiting concentration, of land ownership.’

The SLC has already recommended a public interest test be introduced for Scottish land transfers.

It could give Ministers free rein to block the purchase of holiday homes or artificially cap prices in areas where they believe too many outsiders are moving in.

Matthew Reiss, a Caithness Independent councillor on Highland Council, said there is ‘a growing problem with “green lairds”: multinational companies buying up vast amounts of land to burnish their environmental credentials. And agricultural land does need greater protection from wasteful development.

‘So while there are issues that must be addressed, the SNP has a record of vastly underestimating the cost of implementing their schemes. Rural areas do not need another layer of ineffective expensive bureaucracy.’

The Scottish Government said: ‘We welcome the SLC’s research and will consider any recommendations from this, or any other, work.’

‘Yet another layer of expensive bureaucracy’

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2023-01-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

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