People living in rural communities across Scotland should be given greater powers to own the land they live on than are currently proposed in the draft Land Reform Bill, according to the man in charge of one of the country's leading rural development agencies.

Dr Jim Hunter, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), called this morning [TUES 24 April] for "powers of last resort" - including compulsory purchase for essential community developments and a right of pre-emption on parcels of land in large estates - to be carefully considered by the Scottish Executive before the Bill becomes law.

a meeting of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in Scotland Rural Faculty at Battleby Centre near Perth, Dr Hunter argued that the use of polling district to define community made little sense in rural areas.

"Had HIE and other funding agencies been constrained in the past by the definition of community used in the draft Bill, then none of the headline community purchases of recent years - in Assynt, Eigg and Knoydart - could have occurred," he warned.

He believed that linking communities with polling districts risked handing residents of one locality an effective right of veto over initiatives in neighbouring areas.

In addition, the draft Bill's requirements regarding electoral turnouts were at a level higher than those achieved in most local elections, he said.

A further concern was that community bodies wishing to buy land would have to be bigger and more formally structured than was likely to be the case in many rural contexts.

"What's needed is much more flexibility," said Dr Hunter.

"In effect we should allow communities and community bodies to define themselves, subject of course to minimum statutory requirements in relation to representativeness and democratic structure.

"I'd also like to see some changes made to the draft Bill's provisions regarding the registration of community interest in land.

"To be honest, I don't see what is contributed to community empowerment by the Bill's suggestion that a community should be invited to create a company whose only purpose can be to register an interest in land which may not come on the market for years, decades or even centuries.

"Why not simply give all communities rights of pre-emption over appropriately defined areas of land which come on the market in their vicinity?"

A distinguished historian, Dr Hunter told his audience that land reform was essential to make historically-determined land-use patterns accord more closely with 21st century realities, prospects and opportunities.

There was a need, he argued, to separate a century-long and still-continuing decline in hill farming from the long-term prospects for sustainable communities in the countryside. Greater economic diversity away from hill farming could, he suggested, only benefit rural areas in the long run.

"If people want to create new livelihoods in the countryside, then it makes sense to take some of the land that's currently in hill and upland farming and make it available for new modes of rural settlement.

"It's no accident that some of the rural economies, such as that of Skye, which have shown most vitality in recent years are to be found in crofting areas. "They're also much more thickly settled. Consequently they contain more homes, which often come with two or three hectares attached. Hence the attraction of a crofting setting to rural residents of the sort who wish to combine some essentially non-agricultural source of income - whether from tourism or from internet service provision - with rural residency and the occupancy of a piece of land."

Outside crofting areas, however, the limited supply of smallholdings, the present land ownership structure and planning regulations had combined to ensure that the chance to enjoy a genuinely rural lifestyle was only open to a well-off minority.

In an attempt to tackle this problem, three years ago HIE bought the Orbost estate on Skye. This experiment had, Dr Hunter admitted, generated "lots of controversy".

Nonetheless, on what was formerly a single hill farm, the enterprise agency is currently creating a number of homes and small-scale business premises

"There is a message here in relation to the Executive's land reform proposals," he said.

"Communities rarely wish to buy large areas of land. Our community land unit's record bears this out. The unit has helped 40 communities to buy land. Only eight of those acquisitions have involved estates or large farms. Some 25 have involved areas of less than one hectare.

"Under the draft legislation, if a community wanted a hectare of land to buy a football pitch or sites for affordable housing, it would have to undertake the purchase of, say, a 10,000 hectare estate. And once the community had acquired those 10,000 hectares, it would find it very difficult, maybe impossible under the legislation as drafted, to dispose of the 9,999 hectares it didn't want.

It's my contention that, irrespective of the undoubtedly depressing long-run prospects for hill and upland farming of the traditional types, it's by no means impossible - as Highlands and Islands experience is already demonstrating - to envisage a more prosperous, a more densely peopled and generally more successful Scottish countryside.

This will be a countryside based on a much more diversified economy in which rural residents - including those who occupy land as well as homes - derive the bulk of their income from non-agricultural sources.

"What we need to ensure, and ensure urgently, is that the Scottish parliament's forthcoming debates about land reform are concerned with the realisation of this objective - and that the land reform measures which the parliament eventually adopts contribute positively and constructively to making our countryside a better, more dynamic, sort of place."