THE body which represents Scotland's crofters says its members on local grazings committees will not report their neighbours if they breach regulations.
The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) has submitted its response to the Crofting Commission's consultation on the 'Duty to Report' with a resounding "no", to the idea of monitoring the activities of other local crofters and reporting on the likes of absenteeism.
SCF members have said that they do not think it is within the remit of grazings committees to comment what goes on around each croft on what is called the in-bye, as well as on the common grazings which are shared by local crofts.
Patrick Krause, Chief Executive of the SCF, said: "The grazings committees' responsibility is the management of common grazings. They are voluntary bodies and the Crofting Commission do not have the resources to provide training or support for them. It is difficult enough to get grazings committees together without extra duties being laden upon them, and it is feared that this duty could further discourage crofters from forming grazings committees."
He said the commission had its own assessors and within crofting law could ask crofters to fill in an annual return declaring their residency status and use of the croft.
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