The SCF believes that a community mapping approach to populating the register of crofts would be far more effective and acceptable than the individual ‘trigger point’ concept proposed by Scottish Government. The community gather together and helped by trained facilitators and mediators they generate the maps of their community assets together by walking through the community, comparing existing maps, drawing boundaries on maps and so on. This is a well-practiced development methodology that has proven benefits:
It gets the community together in an exercise that strengthens the community and builds social capital; the community takes ownership of the mapping and the subsequent agreed maps; disputes will still arise but can be more easily resolved at the time using trained mediators in the exercise; the community creates a collective map and/or a series of individual maps that could be submitted to the register together; the mapping itself can be cheaper as there is less dependence on judicial expertise; maps are created and registered in a matter of months. Depending on how well resourced this is, the whole crofting area could be mapped in a few years rather than generations.
What do we hope to achieve?
This project aims to enable communities to take pre-emptive steps to agree their rights and boundaries before they are required to map them for the Land Register. It will also enable communities to assess their assets, both household and community, that will enable them to better plan future developments within their community.
We are pleased to say that the Scottish Government and Registers of Scotland (RoS) are now co-funding a post to facilitate and encourage group registrations to the Crofting Register.
Please see our Rules of Procedure below: