The areas of the Government's reform programme that require changes to legislation are as follows:

• Changes to the governance arrangements for crofting
• Arrangements for a new Register of Crofts
• Better enforcement of requirement of crofters and owner-occupiers to reside on or near the croft and to work the land
• Powers to enable crofters to grant standard securities over their crofts
• An occupancy requirement on housing built on land taken out of crofting tenure in order to tackle speculation on croft land.

A 12 week consultation is taking place on the draft Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill, which will close on 12 August 2009. The following link will take you to the consultation document.

Details of the address to send written responses are included in the consultation document.

Draft Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill

Draft Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill in Gaelic

Public Meetings
In addition to the written consultation, the Government has arranged a series of public meetings where there will be an opportunity to hear a presentation on the draft Bill and the opportunity to ask questions and make comments on the proposed Bill.

Details of the public meetings.

For more information on Crofting Reform visit http://www.scotland.gov.uk/crofting

Alternatively for further information, or hard copies of the document, write to:

Future of Crofting Team
The Scottish Government
Pentland House
Area 1-D
47 Robb’s Loan
Edinburgh
EH14 1TY

or

mailto:futureofcrofting@scotland.gsi.gov.uk