Jamie McGrigor, Highlands & Islands Conservative MSP and Convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group on Crofting, is urging his crofting constituents to consider registering their crofts on the new Crofting Register before the end of November in order to benefit from a registration discount.
Crofting communities are being encouraged to take a collective approach towards registration in order to qualify for the reduced registration fee of £70 per croft for group registration where 10 or more crofts are submitted in the same group or, in crofting townships of less than 10 crofts, where all crofts are submitted at the same time. The full undiscounted fee is £90. The discount equates to a 22% reduction.
The Scottish Government allocated £100,000 to fund this discount offer, and it is understood that a large part of this funding remains available to be used by the end of November due to the fact that many crofters have not yet submitted registration applications.
Speaking today, Jamie said:
“I would encourage crofters to consider making registration applications before the end of November, in order to be absolutely sure to benefit from the £20 per croft discount.
“The fact that it seems likely a significant amount of the £100,000 allocated for the discount scheme will not be used by the 30th November deadline was discussed at last night’s meeting of our Cross-Party Group on Crofting which I convened. There was a strong desire to see the Scottish Government find some kind of mechanism to allow this money to be rolled-over beyond the end of November, and Scottish Government officials suggested this was under active consideration.
"I will be writing to the Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, on this subject on behalf of the Cross-Party Group, and emphasising to him our desire to see all of this funding used to benefit crofters registering their crofts”.
The Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 requires the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland to establish and maintain a free-to-search public register of crofts, common grazings, and land held runrig.