Author: Andy Wightman MSP

The SNP and Conservatives joined forces to pass a “Tory-style Planning Bill” that means communities will have to wait for the means to govern themselves, writes Andy Wightman MSP.

At the heart of environmental concerns is the question of power: who has it, how they exercise it and to whom are they accountable.

Although the Scottish Government makes great play of recent moves to empower communities, the reality is different. The 2015 Community Empowerment Act was designed to give communities a voice and enable citizens to have more say over their local area.

But if this is to mean something, then we should be seeing results. Instead, for too many communities it feels like business as usual with monied developers holding all the cards. Look at plans over the old Sick Kids hospital building in Edinburgh, where the community bid was gazumped, or the ongoing saga on Leith Walk, where despite the wishes of city councillors a developer is dragging out the process and issuing de facto eviction notices to the small businesses that make that place thrive. The family-run Leith Walk Café is due to close this week when its ten-year lease is allowed to expire. It isn’t just a small business. It’s a social hub which contributes to the cohesion of that community.

When it comes to giving communities more control over their own place, over assets and land, we have seen a pattern emerge where policy ambition is stated, then watered down, then apparently abandoned. The recent Planning Bill was the first overhaul of the planning system in over a decade, and a huge opportunity to hand some control back to our communities.

I worked very hard to secure support for proposals to address the dramatic increase in short-term lets which has caused misery for so many people, hollowing out communities. I also moved amendments to allow for more balance in the planning appeals system by introducing equal rights of appeal. I tried to bring more democratic scrutiny to the construction of tracks in in the countryside and across our most precious landscapes.

After making some early progress, it was distressing to watch the SNP team up with the Tories to kill any hope of a progressive, community-centred bill. The lobbyists had been successful and the interests of developers and landowners won over those of the people who have to live with the consequences of a lop-sided planning system. The Conservative housing spokesperson lavished praise on a “Tory-style Planning Bill”, which was particularly telling. Again, it is about who wields the power. In Scotland, that is about who owns land and property.

Among the first acts of the Scottish Parliament were the right to roam, the establishment of national parks and the abolition of feudal tenure. But the fact remains that large-scale land ownership is concentrated in very few hands, and despite some modest successes, communities are as far from power as they’ve ever been. Common ownership of land should be the norm and not simply a response to market failure or disputes with landowners. Across Europe, things are very different with community-sized local government and widespread communal ownership of land. Scotland is an aberration.

In redistributing power, we need to focus on giving communities the kind of real power that is commonplace in Scandinavia. Green politics is based on the principle of radical democracy where communities have the means to govern themselves and deliver the solutions needed to tackle the climate crisis or housing needs. After 20 years of devolution, it is regrettable that so little progress has been made to that end.

Author: Ruth Wilson, James Hutton Institute

The Islands Revival project is collecting examples of “green shoots” of demographic recovery from across the Scottish islands with a view to identifying what activities and interventions are helping and how they can be supported by island policy. The project is led by the James Hutton Institute and SRUC, with funding from the Scottish Government-funded SEFARI Responsive Opportunity Initiative and support from third and public sector partners. This comes at an important time for the islands with the development of the National Islands Plan, which offers opportunities for reinvigoration and revival.

Examples of population turnaround are being collected on the Islands Revival blog, which is reaching an audience of Scottish island communities and policy-makers as well as international experts. The contributions so far are as fascinating and diverse as the islands themselves.

We have heard about changes on Eigg since the community buyout of the island 22 years ago, which have seen the population increase from 65 to almost 100. On Kerrera, the population has doubled in seven years.

It is perhaps no surprise that housing (see posts from Rural Housing Scotland, Westray and Ulva Ferry), jobs (Galson, Eigg) and services (Pairc) are emerging as key to enabling people to live and work in the islands, but the range of community-led initiatives addressing these issues, and the strength of entrepreneurial spirit behind them, are remarkable (West Harris, Uist, Bute).

Notably, the heritage, language and culture of the islands – particularly music – are discussed by the bloggers as having a strong pull for young people, providing a reason for staying or returning that is deeply connected to their identity as islanders and brings a sense of vitality to island life.

The Islands Revival blog is also seeking contributions internationally. A perspective from the Caribbean suggests how Scotland’s islands might engage their diaspora to invest time, money and expertise in the islands.

We are currently inviting further contributions to the blog. If you have an observation or evidence from your own island that you would like to share, see the blog for further details or get in touch with any questions.

The blog will inform a workshop at the end of August, which will facilitate discussion between communities, local and Scottish Government, and international experts, culminating in a Workshop Declaration with recommendations regarding how policy can best support island repopulation.

Author: SCDC

Scottish Community Development Centre and The Poverty Alliance have announced a new support resource for community-led action research, jointly funded by Scottish Government and The National Lottery Community Fund.

The two-year programme will fund six community organisations to develop their own evidence to influence change in their communities – and to take forward actions for improvement. The research evidence generated by the community organisations will be brought together through a new website and used to help shape policy at a national level across Scotland.

Community-led action research is where the community decides on the issue to be researched, designs and carries out the research, and makes use of the results.

This makes community-led action research different from traditional research which tends to be conducted on the community by researchers from outside the community.

A new website, www.knowledgeispower.scot, will bring together the experiences of the six projects, and will highlight how community-led action research can be used across Scotland to support communities to take action on the issues important to them.

In 2018 SCDC and the Poverty Alliance jointly published ‘Knowledge is Power’. This report was the result of series of conversations with community organisations about what is needed to support them to undertake their own research into the issues that affect them, or the opportunities they want to pursue. This work has now come to fruition with the launch of the Knowledge is Power programme.

Maureen McGinn, The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland Chair, said:

“People understand what’s needed in their communities, and we believe that when people are in the lead, then communities thrive. Community-led action research empowers individuals and groups to generate and use evidence to influence and achieve positive change in their community. That is why I am delighted to see National Lottery funding supporting this project along with funding from the Scottish Government.”

Fiona Garven, Director of SCDC, welcomed the new resource saying that:

“We are delighted at this announcement. Community-led action research is about putting communities in control of the generation of evidence needed to support better policy making and better decision making about where resources should be targeted. This funding will give communities the opportunity to make their case for the changes they know they need, backed up by their own robust research evidence.”

More information and details on how to apply to be part of the programme will be announced shortly at www.knowledgeispower.scot

Author: Jennifer Wallace, Jenny Brotchie and Hannah Ormston, Carnegie UK Trust

An Enabling State is one that seeks to address stubborn inequalities of outcome and gives people and communities more control over the public services they receive to improve their own wellbeing.

Summarising the evidence from across the four UK jurisdictions and over 180 sources, our new report, The Enabling State: Where are we now? provides a review of participative, outcomes-based, joined up policy making since 2013 and details what each shift has entailed.

Our assessment found that no jurisdiction of the UK is delivering on all of these shifts, but that overall Scotland and Wales have seen more development over the past five years than England and Northern Ireland.

If you would like to read the detail, we have produced a full report, available to download here.

We have also produced individual report cards for each of the jurisdiction; Wales; Scotland; England; Northern Ireland.

Author: SCA/CE

Accelerate is a partnership between Scottish Community Alliance and Community Enterprise aimed at delivering support to community organisations not currently trading but which have an interest in exploring the potential for further income generation. Click here to download an explanatory leaflet

Author: Scottish Land Commission

The Scottish Land Commission has launched a new survey seeking views of communities across Scotland about community engagement in decisions relating to land.

The Commission wants to make sure that all people in Scotland have the opportunity to be involved in decisions about land that significantly affect them.  The Commission is supporting communities, land owners and land managers to work together to make better – and fairer – decisions about land use with the publication of its first Protocol on Community Engagement in Decisions Relating to Land.

The Commission’s Protocol supports the Guidance on engaging communities in decisions relating to land, which was published by the Scottish Government in April last year.  Over the next couple of years, the Commission will review the effectiveness of the guidance, and recommend improvements if needed. The survey will establish a baseline against which progress can be measured and identify where further support needs to be developed by the Commission or other organisations.

Individual residents and community organisations in both urban and rural Scotland are being asked to complete the survey. The Commission hopes to:

•             learn more about how the way land or buildings are managed impacts communities

•             know what opportunities people have to influence decisions made when land use changes

•             hear what type of support is needed to make engagement more effective.

Clear and open communication is increasingly a key part of public life, with organisations creating mechanisms for ordinary people to be involved in decisions that affect them. A key area where people want to have their say is about local land use and management.

Helen Barton, Community Engagement Advisor at the Scottish Land Commission said:

“We want to hear from communities in both urban and rural Scotland, to find out what level of community engagement is taking place around decisions related to land.

Individuals can respond but also anyone who is involved with community organisations such a community councils, tenants’ or residents’ groups or local government.

“The information provided will not include any personal identifying information and we will collate and analyse the responses to see where there are trends.

“It is important to get an idea of what community engagement is happening now to not only use as a baseline measure but also to see if there are any lessons we can learn from current practices.”

In the survey, the Commission will also be looking to find out how many respondents are aware of the Scottish Government’s guidance as well as the Commission’s own Protocol for Community Engagement, which sets out general and specific expectations for owners and managers of land.

The survey will be open for responses until the end of September 2019 and can be found here

Author: Brian Ferguson, Scotsman

He is one of Scotland’s leading land rights and environmental activists. Now Alastair McIntosh’s efforts to help remote communities fight back against corporate power are set to inspire a major theatre production.

Work is under way to bring the stories of the successful community buy-out on the island of Eigg and the thwarting of plans to build Europe’s biggest quarry on the Isle of Harris to the stage.

Novelist and playwright Alan Bissett has revealed he is adapting McIntosh’s acclaimed memoir Soul And Soil, which he has described as “one of the most important non-fiction books of the last 30 years”.

Released to widespread acclaim in 2001, the book recalls his upbringing on the Isle of Lewis, explores how global capitalism came to threaten traditional ways of life in the Western Isles, and argues for a philosophy of community, spirit and place to help transform such areas.

The play is in development on Lewis, led by new Uig-based arts organisation Sruth-mara in partnership with the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway and its book festival, Faclan, which will stage a sneak preview of Bissett’s play in the autumn. National arts agency Creative Scotland is funding the early development of the play with a view to a full production being staged next year.

Bissett said: “Alastair McIntosh’s Soil And Soul is, for me, one of the most important non-fiction books of the last 30 years. Both reading and adapting it have changed my world-view profoundly, such is Soil And Soul’s benign power. It has a deep resonance for what it says about the way in which land is appropriated by indifferent upper-layers of society, at the expense of the people who live on it, but it also acts as a history of the Highlands, a primer on Celtic Christian theology, and a galvanising appeal to all of our better natures. What I hope we’ve done is taken Alastair’s mighty work and turned it into a piece of theatre that will captivate and transport a live audience into a deeply Hebridean story.”

Born in the village of Leurbost, in 1955, McIntosh was a key figure in the long-running saga over plans to extract 600 million tonnes of rock from Roineabhal, an isolated area in the south of Harris, which were first announced in 1991 and finally rejected in 2004.

He was also one of the trustees who completed a buy-out of Eigg in 1997 after decades of problems with absentee landlords.

McIntosh, who lives in Glasgow, said he had agreed to approve a theatrical adaption of Soil And Soul despite rejecting approaches to turn it into a film.

He added: “I’m in awe at the attention to detail, depth, elegance and beauty of what Alan Bissett has created in his script for Soil And Soul. I never thought it would be possible to capture such a multi-levelled story into a single script like this, and with such an eye for lines that matter, neatly woven in. I’m very much looking forward to working with Alan and the cast on this project, and to sharing what we are creating with an audience on Lewis.”

Andrew Eaton-Lewis, director of Sruth-mara, said: “The book’s themes – ordinary people vs corporate power, industrial development at the expense of small-scale agriculture, environmental damage – are more relevant than ever as the world faces a climate crisis. One of the book’s great strengths is the way it connects stories from Lewis, Harris and Eigg to environmental, cultural and land struggles all across the world. It’s a book that’s deeply rooted in the Hebrides but with a global perspective.” 

Roddy Murray, director of Faclan, said: “As Alastair’s place of birth and upbringing, the island is the crucible for the philosophy and ideas in the original book.”

Author: The Ferret

The launch of the Scottish Government’s public consultation on how to combat the global climate emergency has been condemned as “fiddling while the world burns”.

The inaugural meeting of ministers’ much-vaunted “big climate conversation” in Glasgow on 16 July faced a tirade of public criticism from participants frustrated by its “closed questions and narrow focus”.

When organisers, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), asked at the meeting whether the questions were too narrowly framed, almost all of the 65 people present put up their hands to agree. In response KSB said it would review the format.

The big climate conversation was announced by the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on 19 June to discuss action “to tackle the global climate emergency”. After the event in Glasgow there are due to be meetings in Stirling, Aberdeen, Skye, Fort William and Orkney in July and August.

Highlighting a string of complaints about the Glasgow meeting on social media, the Green MSP, Ross Greer, argued that it was “structured to prevent anything useful coming out of it”. It was “fiddling while the world burns”, he said.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s climate campaigner, Caroline Rance, described the meeting as “very frustrating”. She said: “Governments don’t seem to realise the extent to which public concern and understanding about the climate crisis has grown in the last year.”

The children’s book illustrator, Alison Murray, was shocked at how “lightweight” the conversation was. “Going away really concerned about the lack of information given and really closed leading questions asked,” she tweeted.

 Shocked at how lightweight the #bigclimateconversation was -going away really concerned about the lack of information given and really closed leading questions asked by Keep Scotland Beautiful. Hopefully they will take on board the frustration Glasgow expressed @KSBScotland

Another participant, Heather Urquhart, was disappointed that corporate responsibility, infrastructural change and reducing inequalities were not on the agenda. Only technology and behavioural change were put up for discussion, she said.

At the outset of the meeting people were asked to choose one word to describe their feelings about climate change. The words most chosen loomed large on an overhead projector: overwhelmed, worried, frustrated, scared, angry.

“Broad engagement on the climate emergency is essential, but we need to see big, systemic changes presented as part of the solution,” said Scott Leatham, policy specialist at Scottish Wildlife Trust.

“It was clear that people were engaged but they wanted less focus on individual action and more emphasis on the big picture. We need a process that can respond to the level of climate anxiety and frustration that participants said they felt.”

The Scottish Government argued that responding to the climate emergency will require significant changes across all sectors of society. “The big climate conversation aims to build a collaborative approach to that,” said a spokesperson.

“Through a series of workshops, conferences, meetings, consultation and digital engagement, we want everyone to have their say on how we, as a nation, deliver the transformative changes required.”

The government pointed out that the event in Glasgow was attended by a diverse mix of ages and backgrounds. “The event was reassuringly lively, demonstrating the importance of this issue to the Scottish public,” added the spokesperson.

“In response to some of the feedback, the format will be revised to include more chance for open discussion and encourage attendees to put forward more of their own suggestions while maintaining a means to capture and compare input across all conversations.”

Author: By Alice Watterson, Dundee University

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska is home to the Yup’ik people, who practise a largely subsistence lifestyle characterised by seasonal hunting, fishing and gathering. An archaeological dig happens here each year over the brief summer season between July and August, although seasonal changes, once like clockwork, are becoming less distinct because of climate disruption.

The dig, which goes back nearly a decade, was initiated by the local community with the aim of rescuing the remains of an old sod house in a nearby area known as Nunalleq, or “the old village”, before it is lost to permafrost melt and a crumbling coastline. The site dates from between 1570 and 1675, decades before Yup’ik first came into contact with Russian and European traders.

The excavations, led by a team from Aberdeen University in Scotland, were well underway by the time I joined in 2017. The project has recovered some 100,000 artefacts which were put on public display for the first time in August 2018 at the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Centre in Quinhagak.

As a reconstruction artist, it is my job to translate archaeological findings into renderings of life in the past. In Quinhagak, I was tasked with collaborating with the local community to co-design a digital resource for schoolchildren. It tells the story of the excavations in a way that makes space for the traditional Yup’ik worldview and contemporary parallels in subsistence, dance and crafts.

Within this resource, 3D-scanned artefacts and animated reconstructions of village life at Nunalleq can be explored on a computer screen, accompanied by soundbites, videos and interactive content co-curated by the Quinhagak community and the archaeologists. It will be available to the public here from July 2019.

The purpose of my trip in April 2019 was to test the resource on school computers in the village. This trip was outside the usual dig season so I stayed with a local family. My host was schoolteacher Dora Strunk, who was raised in Quinhagak and whose children belong to a generation in the village who grew up with the archaeology project.

Whether it was bouncing across the tundra on Dora’s four-wheeler to collect kapuukuq greens, or sitting in her daughter Larissa’s bedroom listening to her explain the meaning behind her traditional dance regalia, these friendships have gradually reshaped my own understanding of what it means to be Yup’ik in the 21st century.

What heritage means

I’ve heard objections to the collection being housed in the village: shouldn’t it be in a big museum in Anchorage or New York where more people can see it, “for the greater good”?

What I have learned during my visits here is that there is a need to maintain heritage within a community – and to allow it to be part of the here and now. Heritage is often seen as being focused on fragmented artefacts and ruinous buildings, but for many people, particularly indigenous and descendant communities, it can be intrinsically connected to a sense of social identity and cohesion.

Like many indigenous communities across the world, Yup’ik are still dealing with the effects of deep historic trauma from centuries of colonisation, exploitation and misrepresentation. Yet unlike the majority of Native Americans in the lower 48 states, Alaska Native land isn’t compacted into Indian reservations. People still traverse the vast expanse of tundra and coastline like their ancestors did thousands of years ago.

That said, maintaining this connection to land and tradition does not constitute a bygone era. Yup’ik is a living culture fully part of the modern world, with Snapchat and drum dances, microwave pizza and walrus ivory carving, snow machines and subsistence practices – even Facebook feeds filled with Yup’ik memes. Culture persists.

Establishing the Nunalleq centre in Quinhagak and helping to create the digital resource with the Yup’ik community is part of the same mind set that is prompting a handful of museums to repatriate artefacts and remains to descendant communities – while others come under mounting pressure to do so.

My latest trip coincided with the district’s annual dance festival, which brought together schools from across the region. I had worked with young people from the local group the previous summer, who had chosen to interpret the excavation of dance regalia from Nunalleq by writing a new traditional drum song or yuraq about the site. They performed it again at this year’s festival.

During the festival, many youngsters came to the museum to see the artefacts. I witnessed teenagers pulling open drawers containing wooden dance masks, drum rings, ivory earrings, bentwood bowls and harpoons with trembling hands. Big kids lifted little kids up to peer into the cabinets and gasp, asking: “These all came from down there? From our beach?”

The “greater good” is right here: not only the collection being housed in Quinhagak, but also the work the village is doing to take charge of its story and share it with the wider world through outreach like the Nunalleq Educational Resource.

For Quinhagak, the past is not a place which is independent from the present. For the younger generation especially, the past is becoming a space for engaging with their heritage which they are continually transforming and reimagining in the present.

Author: By Calum MacLeod

The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 and Rural Repopulation

The Scottish Parliament recently passed the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 after three days of intense and increasingly acrimonious debate in the Chamber. The Bill was originally envisaged by the Scottish Government as a measure to streamline the land use planning system. Instead, it became a legislative ‘free for all’ as MSPs from all parties weighed in with well over 300 amendments; the highest total ever tabled for a Bill progressing through its legislative stages at Holyrood and a reflection of the political importance of the planning system as something that both directly and indirectly affects people’s everyday lives. Not all of these amendments survived the Bill’s protracted and occasionally stormy passage, with the Greens, Labour and Liberal Democrats voting against it becoming law while the SNP and Conservatives voted in favour.

Amongst other things, the new Act sets in statute for the first time the purpose of planning as being to manage the development and use of land in the long term public interest. It sets out issues for consideration in developing both the next National Planning Framework (NPF) which is the long-term spatial plan for Scotland and future Local Development Plans formulated by Planning Authorities. The Act also introduces provisions for Local Place Plans, envisaged as enabling communities to have a stronger say in deciding how their local areas are developed and Masterplan Consent Areas to more readily facilitate development in specified areas.

Several amendments that did survive the cull relate to rural repopulation and resettlement, and reflect much of what Community Land Scotland – the membership organisation for Scotland’s community landowners – called for in its evidence submission on the draft Planning Bill back in January 2018. Community Land Scotland’s proposals for rural repopulation and resettlement drew considerable media attention at the time. Amongst the more excitable headlines was that of one national newspaper proclaiming “Lairds warn against plans to reverse Clearances”. Pause for a moment to contemplate the rich seams of irony contained within these words.

The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 makes several explicit links between rural repopulation, land reform and the continuing evolution of Scotland’s planning system. Increasing the population of rural areas of Scotland is included as one of four outcomes for the National Planning Framework. Scottish Ministers must have regard to the desirability of resettling rural areas that have become depopulated when preparing the content of the Framework and allocating land for resettlement may now be a consideration for developing both the NPF and Local Development Plans. Preparation of the next NPF will also include scope for producing maps and other material relating to rural areas where there has been a substantial decline in population. The Framework must have regard for any Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement or any strategy for land ownership or use prepared by Scottish Ministers. There are also provisions in the new Planning Act about reporting on and improving consultation with communities in relation to the designation of any new National Scenic Areas.

These amendments matter because of the depopulation crisis that great swathes of rural Scotland – and particularly the Highlands and Islands – face. In 2018 the James Hutton Institute published research indicating that, “in the absence of intervention”, Scotland’s Sparsely Populated Area (SPA), covering almost half of Scotland’s land area but containing less than 3% of the nation’s population, faces losing more than a quarter of its population by 2046; a decline which “implies serious challenges for economic development, and consequences for its landscape and ecology which are poorly understood”. Similarly grim projections are contained in The Highland Council’s Corporate Plan for 2017-2022 which was updated earlier this year. Inverness, Skye and Lochalsh, and Ross and Cromarty are projected to see their populations increase between 2016 and 2041. Yet many other places in the region are set to see their populations continue to spiral downwards during the same period: Sutherland (-11.9%); Caithness (-21.1%); East Ross (-13.8%); Badenoch and Strathspey (-5.3%); and Lochaber (-5.9%).

The rural repopulation and resettlement provisions contained in the new Planning Act can help reconfigure the planning system as an effective policy tool to help address the litany of depopulation facing much of the Highlands and Islands and elsewhere in rural Scotland. However, the effects of these provisions will inevitably take time to come to fruition, given that the next iterations of both the National Planning Framework and of Planning Authorities’ Local Development Plans lie some way into the future. They also depend on the commitment of Government and Planning Authorities to drive the planning system towards land use that is genuinely sustainable in helping deliver the affordable housing, physical and services infrastructure and high quality jobs that are vital in helping to retain and attract more people to live and work in our rural places.

The planning system is ultimately a single piece – albeit an influential one – of a policy jigsaw that urgently needs to be assembled for Scotland’s sparsely populated rural places to flourish. Part of the challenge lies in reframing our relationship as a society with land and landscapes in ways that enable our rural communities to exist and thrive as a matter of social justice while simultaneously safeguarding our natural heritage.

Land reform, defined in the Land Reform Review Group’s 2014 report, ‘The land of Scotland and the common good’, as “measures that modify or change the arrangements governing the possession and use of land in Scotland in the public interest” has a vital role to play in reframing that relationship. However, its relevance as a cross-cutting theme to advance sustainable rural development has yet to fully penetrate the siloed structures of Government if ‘A new blueprint for Scotland’s rural economy: recommendations to Scottish Ministers’, a report issued in September 2018 by the National Council of Rural Advisors is any guide. That influential document in shaping Government thinking on the rural economy mentions land precisely once in calling for development of “ecosystems services and climate change mitigation actions that reflect best land use-practice”. There is not a single mention of the significance of land ownership as a driver for rural development or of land reform more generally.

Such omissions are perplexing, particularly in light of the Scottish Land Commission’s subsequent research report in March of this year highlighting abuses of power as a result of concentrated land ownership in Scotland. The Commission’s report highlights “fear of repercussions from “going against the landowner” expressed by some people. This fear was rooted firmly in the concentration of power in some communities and the perceived ability of landowners to inflict consequences such as eviction or blacklisting for employment/contracts on residents should they so wish”. This is testimony given to the Land Commission in 21stcentury Scotland. You’d be forgiven for mistaking it for evidence to the Napier Commission of the 1880s, so shockingly does it collide with our self-image as a socially progressive nation.

It’s clear that rural communities in Scotland’s sparsely populated areas face a crisis of depopulation that threatens their very existence in the longer term. Provisions contained in the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 offer encouragement that the planning system has an important role to play in tackling that crisis if there is genuine will on the part of Government and Planning Authorities to implement them effectively. But much more needs to be done. If we are serious about addressing rural depopulation then land reform in its broadest sense, encompassing changes to both land ownership and land use in the public interest, needs to be front and centre in future rural policy development as a matter of social justice.

By coincidence, there’s an opportunity to start doing exactly that. A couple of weeks ago the Scottish Government announced the creation of a Ministerial Task Group on Population, chaired by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Tourism, Culture and External Affairs with a remit to “consider Scotland’s future population challenges and develop new solutions to address demographic and population change”. The extent to which the Task Group takes up the policy cudgels on behalf of rural communities imperilled by depopulation will provide an early indication of where their needs sit in the policy pecking order.