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80 Mont. L. Rev. 211 (2019)
The Parable of Portobello: Lessons and Questions from the First Urban Acquisition under the Scottish Community Right-to-Buy Regime

handle is hein.journals/montlr80 and id is 211 raw text is: THE PARABLE OF PORTOBELLO: LESSONS AND QUESTIONS FROM THE FIRST URBAN ACQUISITION UNDER THE SCOTTISH COMMUNITY RIGHT-TO-BUY REGIME John A. Lovett* and Malcolm M. Combe** Towards the end of its first term, the newly constituted Scottish Parliament, brought into being by the United Kingdom's Scotland Act 1998, passed the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 by a convincing margin of 101 votes to 19. On March 16, 2016, the Scottish Parliament voted through what is now the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 by an even more convincing 108 votes to 14. The short titles of those two statutes, not to mention the cross-politi- cal party support for the contents of both acts, demonstrate that land reform is a vital policy interest in contemporary Scotland. Both statutes contain provisions that aim to facilitate or, in some cases, compel transfer of land from an existing landowner to a community body. Another new statute, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, expands the community right to buy introduced by the 2003 legislation from purely rural applica- tion to the whole of Scotland, while also introducing new rights of commu- nity acquisition for land left underused or in a detrimental state. All of this legislative activity has been accompanied by a cultural shift favoring com- munity ownership of land and continued financial support for community land acquisition schemes. This essay considers the drive toward community land ownership in Scotland with reference to a recent community acquisi- tion in Portobello, a community on the outskirts of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. It draws a number of lessons from this first urban acquisition under the Scottish community right-to-buy regime and raises questions about such acquisitions as well. We met Ian Cooke at the Skylark Caf6 at the quiet end of the High Street in Portobello at half past noon on a Thursday in June. The sky was a radiant blue. We could smell the salt air and hear seagulls call to each other as they soared on currents blowing in from the North Sea. Over salads and dusty lemonade, Ian, the director of the Development Trusts Association * De Van D. Daggett, Jr. Professor, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. ** Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Aberdeen. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay provided by Ian Cooke, Jayne Glass, Frankie Mc- Carthy, Annie Tindley and Kirsteen Shields. All errors are those of the authors.

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