UK Construction and Law

Scotland is to replace two centuries of compulsory purchase legislation with a single Act, and to allow acquisition short of freehold

By Staff Writer  |  27 August 2026

The Scottish Government has confirmed it will legislate on compulsory purchase after a consultation found widespread support for change. Four measures are named: one statute, more flexible powers so that authorities need not always buy outright, electronic service of notices, and a review of compensation.

The announcement of 26 August is a commitment to bring forward legislation rather than a Bill, and it follows a consultation on compulsory purchase orders whose responses have been published. The framing is unusually direct about the state of the existing law, which is scattered across statutes of very different ages and which practitioners have to assemble by hand on every scheme.

The legal framework governing compulsory purchase in Scotland is old, complex and fragmented, with core parts of the legislation dating back almost two centuries.

Hannah Mary Goodlad, Minister for Public Finance

The four measures

The first is consolidation: a single Compulsory Purchase Act, intended to make the approval process faster and more certain. That is the change that matters most to anyone who has had to work out which of several nineteenth and twentieth century regimes applies to a particular acquisition, and to advise on the timetable that follows.

The second is the most substantive. Authorities are to be given more flexible powers rather than having to acquire land permanently in all cases. Where a scheme needs occupation for a construction period, or an interest short of the freehold, the ability to take exactly that is a different negotiating position from one where the only lawful route is outright purchase. It should also change what has to be paid, since compensation follows the interest taken.

The third is procedural and overdue. Notices and documents are to be capable of being served electronically, with consistent data standards attached. Service is where compulsory purchase timetables tend to fail, and the requirement for consistent data standards suggests something more organised than allowing an email attachment.

The fourth is a review of compensation rules, expressed as ensuring fairness to owners and to acquiring authorities alike. No proposition about the compensation code has been settled, and the announcement should not be read as one.

What has not been decided

Compulsory sale orders and compulsory lease orders are not among the four. The record says the case for introducing them will continue to be further explored, drawing on the evidence gathered through the consultation, and a separate consultation analysis on those instruments has been published. Anyone treating them as coming is reading more into the announcement than it says.

The stated purpose is worth noting because it sets the direction of travel for how the powers are expected to be used. The government wants authorities to make positive and proactive use of them, on projects running from bringing individual empty homes back into use through to major infrastructure and regeneration. The counterweight it names is that a reformed system must give those affected opportunities to challenge, treat them with respect and compensate them fairly.

For advisers on either side of a Scottish acquisition, the practical position for now is that nothing has changed. The current statutes still govern every live order, and the timetable for a Bill has not been given. What has changed is the direction: an authority that has been reluctant to use its powers is being told the powers are meant to be used, and the flexibility to take less than the whole is the part of that message most likely to alter how schemes are put together.