A high-profile land reform campaigner has turned his fire on companies with charitable status in a new assault on absentee landlords.
Andy Wightman is challenging landowners on the Island of Bute and the Applecross peninsula in Wester Ross in a bid to make them locally accountable. Ninety applications for membership rights to two companies were delivered yesterday to their registered offices in Edinburgh.
If successful, the new members will work with local residents to hand over the companies to community control. Applicants in this initial wave include supporters from across Scotland as well as people from Bute and Applecross.
The campaigners are focusing on the Mount Stuart Trust and the Applecross Trust. The Mount Stuart Trust owns 28,000 acres on Bute and is wholly controlled by five members of the Marquess of Bute's family plus an accountant and lawyer. None of them lives on Bute. The Applecross Trust owns 61,000 acres of the Applecross peninsula. It is wholly controlled by seven people and chaired by Richard Wills, of Andover in Hampshire. None of the members lives in Applecross.
As companies with charitable status they have no share- holders, only members who are the directors. There are no restrictions on who can become members. Mr Wightman, co-ordinator of the new Land Action Scotland campaign, said the move was designed to revitalise the land reform agenda, and coincide with the Scottish Government's Land reform Review Group starting its work.
"They exert enormous influence over the communities of Bute and Applecross, and yet they remain in the exclusive control of a handful of people who have shown no interest in extending participation to local residents," he said.
Archie MacLellan, administrator of the Applecross Trust, said the body already acted in the interests of the local community:
"The trust provides very significant investment within Applecross aimed at supporting the local community," he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article