Land Management Plans: Preparing for the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025

Land Management Plans (LMPs), reviewed every five years, will become the principal community engagement obligation for owners of large landholdings of over 1,000 hectares under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025. If you own or manage a large Scottish estate, now is the time to prepare — before secondary legislation makes compliance a statutory deadline.

What Are Land Management Plans (LMPs)?

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 introduces a new duty on owners of large landholdings (LLHs), broadly, holdings over 1,000 hectares, to prepare and publish a Land Management Plan. An LMP sets out an owner’s long-term vision and objectives for the land, evidences how local communities and tenants have been consulted, and must be reviewed at least every five years.
The detailed content and format of LMPs have not yet been finalised; Scottish Ministers will set these through secondary legislation. The direction of travel, though, is clear: greater transparency, mandatory community engagement, and enforceable public reporting.

Who Does This Affect?

The obligation targets owners, investors, and managers of large landholdings across Scotland, including estates, forestry, and rural investment portfolios, as well as institutional landowners, where the combined holding exceeds the large landholding threshold

What Will an LMP Need to Cover?

While final regulations are pending, the Act already signals the core categories of information an LMP should contain, including:

• Evidence of stakeholder and community engagement in preparing and reviewing the plan
• Compliance with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code and public access arrangements
• Alignment with relevant Local Place Plans
• Climate change adaptation measures
• Biodiversity and natural capital considerations

Owners will also need to demonstrate an ongoing process, not a one-off document, since stakeholders are expected to have a say in how effectively the LMP is delivered over time.

How We Can Help

Planning Solutions Consulting’s expertise lies in the recreational dimensions of land use, including tourism, public access, and the management of recreation on rural and estate land. This is precisely the areas LMPs must address: outdoor access, visitor pressure, and community expectations about how land is used and enjoyed.
Early input from a specialist in recreation and access planning can help you:

• Map site history and current visitor and community use of the land
• Over time, collect robust data on land user characteristics, footfall and seasonal patterns
• Analyse trends in recreational demand and future-proof sites against potential visitor pressure
• Design a community engagement and consultation process that meets the Act’s requirements
• Benchmark current practice against the Scottish Outdoor Access Code
• Reduce enforcement and reputational risk ahead of the Commissioner’s oversight

By building the evidence base now, estates can move from reactive compliance to a well-evidenced LMP, and improve how visitors and communities experience the land.

Relevant Experience

Our recreation and access planning work already spans the kind of evidence base an LMP demands.

In Scotland, working with an associate based in the Highlands, we have advised on visitor management planning and sustainable tourism for East Lothian Council, the Glen Nevis Landscape Partnership and the National Trust for Scotland.

Further south, we prepared a visitor experience development plan for Natural Resources Wales at Afan Forest Park, a 12,000-hectare site, and developed an access and visitor management plan for Cumbria Connect, a farmer, landowner and conservationist partnership covering 42,000 hectares of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. We’ve also worked with Forestry England at Bedgebury National Pinetum and Dalby Forest.

It’s this kind of site-level, evidence-led work, across large, multi-stakeholder landholdings that an LMP is built on.

Prepare Now, Not Under Pressure

The specific content of LMPs is still to be confirmed by Scottish Ministers, but larger estates, institutional landowners and investors should not wait for final regulations before starting preparatory work. Early engagement, site mapping and data collection now will save time, cost and risk once the statutory deadlines are set.

Talk to PSC about Land Management Plans

Get in touch with PSC to discuss how we can help you prepare a robust, evidence-based approach to Land Management Plans, community engagement and outdoor access compliance under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025.

Email Richard Linington richard@pslplan.co.uk