News

SCF ADDRESSES INTERNATIONAL BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The Scottish Crofting Foundation (SCF), the only member-led organisation dedicated to promoting crofting took part this week in the International Conference “La Settimana della Biodiversità” held in Rome.

The event saw farmers from across Europe come together to exchange their experiences with agricultural biodiversity Organised by Bioversity International the conference was designed to remind the public and the world’s decision makers how significant agricultural biodiversity is to people’s health and nutrition.

scf_address_biodiversity_conf

SCF warn that Croft Register Plan could rob crofters of their rights

Monday, May 17, 2010

The Scottish Crofting Federation have warned that the Scottish Government plan for a compulsory register of croft-land could lead to many traditional
crofting rights being lost.

The proposal for a Register of Crofts to be compiled and held by Registers of Scotland is part of the controversial Crofting Reform Bill which was
debated in Parliament yesterday.

Norman Leask, SCF’s Parliamentary spokesman, said "It is astonishing that the government are still doggedly going down this track, even against advice
from crofting lawyers, the experts in this field. There was also significant questioning of the need for there to be two Registers of Crofts by
the Parliamentary committee who scrutinised the Bill and by MSPs from across the parties in the debating chamber yesterday. There is an existing
register held by the Crofters Commission which needs to be completed and would benefit by up-grading to include croft maps. This will be all
that is needed and is all that crofters have asked for. But the Government is insisting that a second register needs to be compiled, at
crofters’ cost, to put crofts on to the land register, a property register held by Registers of Scotland in Edinburgh. Our legal advice
is that the Keeper of this register is highly unlikely to record all the information that is pertinent to crofts, such as grazing rights, hill
share and souming (number of livestock allowed), peat cutting rights, the position of nousts (where boats are kept), rights of access and so
on. If title is then exchanged without these rights recorded they are lost forever".

 For more information please download the PDF below:

scf-warn-croft-register.pdf

SCF PRAISE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT DILIGENCE

Thursday, May 06, 2010

The Scottish Crofting Federation have welcomed the publication of the Scottish parliament Rural Affairs and Environment Committee’s report on their Stage 1 scrutiny of the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill.

Marina Dennis, Convenor of the SCF crofting reform working group, said “We are pleased that the conclusion is that legislation should proceed. The Parliamentary Committee have clearly put a great deal of effort into the scrutiny of this Bill and reported back with due diligence. The report shows that the committee have listened to what crofters have been saying and have paid attention to the SCF, the crofters’ representative organisation.

SCF_PRAISE_SP_DILIGENCE.pdf