Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 (2015 Asp 6).

This Act provides a legal framework that will promote and encourage community empowerment and participation. It creates new rights for community bodies and places new duties on public authorities. The Act amends the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, extending the community right to buy to all of Scotland, urban and rural, and improving procedures. It also introduces a new provision for community bodies to purchase land which is abandoned, neglected or causing harm to the environmental wellbeing of the community, where the owner is not willing to sell that land. The purchase must be in the public interest and compatible with the achievement of sustainable development of the land. The Act also allows for different types of community bodies to be involved in forestry leasing. “Land” for this purpose includes inland waters (within the meaning of section 69(1) of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003).
Each local authority and the persons listed in Schedule 1 must carry out planning for the area of the local authority for the purpose mentioned in subsection (2) (“community planning”). The purpose is improvement in the achievement of outcomes resulting from, or contributed to by, the provision of services delivered by or on behalf of the local authority or the persons listed in Schedule 1. Community planning partners listed in Schedule 1 include, among other things, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, national parks authorities and Scottish Natural Heritage. In carrying out community planning, the local authority and the persons listed in Schedule 1 must— (a) participate with each other, and (b) participate with any community body in such a way as to enable that body to participate in community planning. Each community planning partnership must— (a) consider which community bodies are likely to be able to contribute to community planning having regard in particular to which of those bodies represent the interests of persons who experience inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage, (b) make all reasonable efforts to secure the participation of those community bodies in community planning, and (c) to the extent (if any) that those community bodies wish to participate in community planning, take such steps as are reasonable to enable the community bodies to participate in community planning to that extent. The Forestry Act, 1967 is amended so as to provide for the meaning of “community body”. More substantial amendments are made to the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 in relation to the definition and composition of crofting community bodies and ability to purchase crofting land.