Balmoral ownership is a block on real land reform in Scotland

WHO does own Scotland, then? This question is a little tricky. If you wish to find out who owns a certain field or a house or a forest or an office block, then the Registers of Scotland should be able to help.

If there is an address then it should be quite straightforward. But if there is no address – for example, it’s a field – then, unless it is on the Land Register, it may be impossible to find out since the Register of Sasines is not plan based.

As the Land Register coverage expands, things will get easier. Meanwhile, the Who Owns Scotland website contains details of more than 4000 landholdings covering more than 5.7 million hectares of Scotland – 75% of rural Scotland.

However, if you wish to find out the pattern of ownership over a parish or a county, or want to know how it has changed over time, or the breakdown between different kinds of owners, or the amount of land held in community ownership, then the official records are of no help.

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It was to answer these kinds of questions – questions of public interest – that I wrote Who Owns Scotland in 1996 and subsequently launched the Who Owns Scotland project and website. So what does all this data tell us?

What is revealing about these figures is the persistent pattern of very concentrated private ownership of land which has remained virtually static since 1995. The number of owners owningholding 50% of the privately-owned rural land has increased by only 2% in 30 years since 1995. The number of landowners with 60% has in fact decreased since 2012, from 989 to 917 in 2024. The reason for this decrease is the steady amalgamation of farms and the acquisition of multiple holdings across Scotland by some recently established landowners.

This trend has seen the number of owners owning holding 70% of privately-owned rural land decreasing from 3161 to 2589. Today, there are 3.2 million hectares of land held by a mere 21 landowners and 4.5 million hectares – 70% of privately owned rural land – owned by 2589 landowners.

Whereas the pattern of private ownership has become a little more concentrated, the extent of land under community ownership and other forms of not-for-profit ownership, such as conservation bodies, has more than doubled from 184,441 hectares in 1995 to more than 420,000 hectares in 2024.

These developments are explored in later chapters of my book. Meanwhile, let’s look in a little more detail at the various sorts of landowners in Scotland.

The Public Owners Scottish ministers – the legal name for the Scottish Government and the successor entity to the Secretary of State for Scotland – is the largest landowner in Scotland, with 753,400 hectares of land or 9.8% of the land area of Scotland.

Other publicly-owned land, such as Scottish Water land and Ministry of Defence land, totals a further 154,213 hectares. The total extent of publicly-owned land is 907,613 hectares – 11.8% of Scotland.

Land held by Scottish ministers consists of two main holdings, namely the National Forest Estate managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (formerly known as the Forestry Commission), and the crofting and agriculture estates managed by the Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate (things were clearer when it was simply the Board of Agriculture).

The agricultural estate is dominated by large estates, principally in the Western Isles, Skye and Sutherland, which were acquired early in the 20th century to create smallholdings and crofts.

An additional 3560 hectares of land on Barra was acquired in 2003 when MacNeil of Barra gifted it to the government. The Transfer of Crofting Estates (Scotland) Act 1997 provides a right for crofting townships to take over ownership of Scottish ministers’ land.

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The first and only transfer to date took place in January 2010 when 7861 hectares, comprising the three townships of Borve, Luskentyre and Scaristavore in west Harris, were acquired by the West Harris Trust.

Other land held by Scottish ministers includes iconic properties such as Edinburgh and Stirling castles as well as land managed by the Crofters Commission, Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Crown Estate Scotland administers the 35,589-hectare Crown Estate in Scotland, which comprises the Fochabers, Glenlivet, Whitehill and Applegirth estates, together with around half of Scotland’s foreshore and the 100,000 square kilometres of seabed out to the 12-mile territorial limits of Scotland.

In addition to this, the Crown in Scotland has property rights over the continental shelf to the 200-nautical-mile limit. This represents one of the most valuable public estates in Scotland and has been the subject of much recent debate.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) was established in 1992 and, although it now brands itself NatureScot, it is legally still SNH. It is the Scottish Government’s conservation agency and inherited its 33,255-hectare landholding from its predecessor, the Nature Conservancy Council.

It consists mainly of national nature reserves, the largest of which are the Island of Rum, Beinn Eighe and Creag Meagaidh.

The Secretary of State for Defence owns 23,100 hectares of land, principally around the Garelochhead, with a range of smaller RAF bases and training grounds across the country.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise owns the Cairngorm Estate which includes the Cairngorm ski resort. This was originally part of Forestry and Land Scotland’s Glenmore Estate but was transferred to the Highlands and Islands Development Board in 1971 for the purposes of developing downhill skiing facilities.

In 2006, a consultation was launched on future ownership options but the plans were abandoned in 2007.

(Image: Knight Frank)

Local authorities own a substantial amount of property, and under this category is included common good land. Their rural holdings consist mainly of common land belonging to burghs in the Borders and a large estate in Shetland.

Efforts to improve the asset registers of local authorities have slowly paid off. Most are still not digitally mapped, however, and this makes any comprehensive analysis difficult. Some property dates back to the original burgh charters and is therefore not even in the Register of Sasines, as its ownership has never changed except by virtue of the various statutes reforming local government structures.

Scottish Water inherited the holdings of the old regional water boards in 1996 and manages them for the supply of water. Its largest holdings are at Lintrathen in Angus and the Loch Katrine estate north of Glasgow, which has been leased on a long lease to Forestry and Land Scotland.

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As part of an ongoing process of pursuing efficiencies in government, the Scottish Government published a review of all land held by Scottish ministers and agencies in 2009 which made various recommendations for managing the estate more efficiently.

Private land ownership in Scotland is characterised by a mixture of large estates, owner-occupied farms and private forestry holdings, and by a range of ownership vehicles from individuals to companies, offshore trusts, family trusts and farming partnerships.

It is also characterised by a very open and unregulated market in land. Recent reforms have promoted the concept of community ownership and this has been the most prominent change in the pattern over the past 30 years but, on the question of the rest, there remains considerable disinterest.

With the usual rhetorical statements, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill was introduced to Parliament in March 2024.

On close inspection, however, it will achieve little.

This is unfortunate since it is perfectly possible to apply the same evidence-based analysis to the question of how land should be held as it is to any other aspect of public policy. As a consequence, apart from the growth in state ownership in the early 20th century, the pattern of private ownership has been left to the market.

Who Owns Balmoral Estate?

Balmoral is the archetypal Highland estate – but all is not as it seems, and the way in which the late Queen and now the King have arranged their affairs provides an insight into how the upper classes have managed to protect their wealth and land, and reveals deep-seated questions that lie at the heart of the debate on land reform in Scotland.

Contrary to popular belief, Queen Victoria did not fall in love with Balmoral and purchase it in the 19th century.

Likewise, the King is often regarded as the owner of Balmoral Estate but in fact isn’t. If you had looked at Balmoral’s website when I first published my book in 2010, you would have seen the following claim: “Purchased by Queen Victoria in 1848, the estate has been the Scottish home of the British royal family ever since.”

And: “The estate is owned and funded by Her Majesty The Queen, personally rather than as Sovereign.”

Both claims were wrong. Queen Victoria took a lease of Balmoral Estate in 1848 from the trustees of the Duke of Fife. The estate was then purchased in 1852 not by Queen Victoria but by Prince Albert.

The 1760 Civil List Act meant that any property bought by the monarch would become part of the Crown Estate, the revenues of which are surrendered to Parliament in return for the Civil List, and, since Queen Victoria had no wish for that to happen, the title for Balmoral was instead acquired in Albert’s name.

In the same year, the Balmoral Estates Act was passed to avoid any questions arising over the legitimacy of this arrangement.

The Crown Private Estates Act was then passed in 1862 to enable Victoria to inherit Balmoral in her private capacity following Albert’s death. The website of Balmoral Estate now contains the correct information on the history of the acquisition.

The Crown Private Estates Act further stipulated, in Section 4, that all property owned by the monarch in their private capacity would be held not by them personally but be vested in trustees.

Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1952, a trust was established and Balmoral became owned by the trustees under Deeds of Nomination and Appointment by HM Queen Elizabeth.

The Queen was the beneficiary of this trust. In 1997, the three trustees were the Rt Hon David George Coke; Patrick Ogilvy, Earl of Airlie; Sir Iain Tennant KT LLD, and Sir Michael Charles Gerrard Peat CVV, Keeper of the Privy Purse. In 2005, a company was incorporated to act as the corporate trustee, replacing the existing trust. Canup Ltd registered the estate in the Land Register in November 2016.

Its directors are Richard Gledson, the factor at Balmoral; Sir Brian Ivory, the Duke of Buccleuch, and Sir Michael Stevens, the current Keeper of the Privy Purse. So what does Canup Ltd own? First of all, it owns the Balmoral Estate itself, which was extended by the purchase of lands in Angus – Bachnagairn and White Mounth in 1947 and Glen Doll in 1997. In addition, it owns the Delnadamph Estate, acquired in 1977 and 1980. In total, the company owns around 21,723 hectares.

This makes the King the 26th largest private landowner in Scotland – up from 30th in 1995 and 65th in 1970. Private landownership in Scotland remains a small, interrelated and privileged club which is proud to have the King as a member.

But with land reform being such an important part of public policy, what message does it send out when the King continues to play the role of Highland laird? He is supposed to set an example.

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In Scotland, public policy on land reform is to secure a more diverse and less concentrated pattern of private land ownership. The King runs counter to that by owning a large and expanding estate.

Like other large land owners, he owns estates to provide him with a place to spend his holidays, can continue to enjoy his holidays as others do by renting a castle or country hotel. Under state or community ownership, the King could even continue to enjoy holidays at Balmoral if he wished.

Any serious attempt at dismantling the concentrated pattern of private landownership in Scotland will get nowhere if it does not face up to the fact that the King’s ownership of Balmoral is a central part of the self-same problem. It remains an obstacle to radical land reform since its continued existence legitimises large-scale private land ownership.

When the King inherited Balmoral, he paid no inheritance tax because, although the Queen’s estate was subject to inheritance tax, bequests from sovereign to sovereign are exempt. The rationale for this is that private assets such as Sandringham and Balmoral have official as well as private use, and that the monarchy as an institution needs sufficient private resources to enable it to continue to perform its traditional role in national life, and to have a degree of financial independence from the government of the day.

While increasing numbers of people face 40% inheritance tax bills on their parents’ houses – and quite rightly so – the King’s heir will not. And whereas many ordinary people will have to sell inherited assets to pay the bill, the argument is that the sovereign needs to have sufficient private resources.

But Prince William, who would have to foot the bill were he to be liable, earned more than £21 million last year from the Duchy of Cornwall, his own estates.

Any moves to change the pattern of ownership should not be regarded as an attack on the King personally, but as a challenge to the idea that Scotland can ever truly create a modern democracy when its land continues to be in the hands of so few people and when, on issues such as inheritance tax, they are subject to different rules from the rest of society.

Balmoral Estate is a block on land reform and, for as long as its ownership remains unquestioned, so too will the wider pattern of large-scale unregulated private ownership. Balmoral is the personal property of the King rather than part of the Crown Estate, but the time has come to end this peculiar situation which continues to stand in the way of meaningful land reform. 

Andy Wightman is an independent researcher and writer and one of Scotland’s leading authorities on landownership, land rights and land reform.