Land activism UK

Communities can sometimes buy the land they live on and manage them through locally-run trusts. There are many examples of this in Scotland including Eigg, Assynt and Ulva.

A community land trust (CLT) is a nonprofit, community-based corporation that owns land in trust for the benefit of a defined geographic area and manages that land over the long term on behalf of the community. CLTs typically retain ownership of the land and convey long-term ground leases to individual homeowners, housing cooperatives, nonprofit organizations or other entities that own the buildings and improvements. By separating the ownership of land from the ownership of housing and other structures, CLTs seek to preserve long-term affordability and protect community assets from speculative increases in land value.

CLTs have been used to steward a variety of community assets, including affordable owner-occupied and rental housing, community gardens, civic and cultural facilities and commercial spaces. Many CLTs describe their purpose as balancing the interests of individual leaseholders, who seek secure tenure and limited equity, with the interests of the wider community, such as maintaining affordable housing, preventing displacement and promoting racial and economic inclusion. A commonly cited structure for a "classic" CLT is a membership-based nonprofit with a tripartite board in which leaseholders, other community residents and public or professional stakeholders each hold one-third of the seats.

Since the late 20th century, CLTs have been adopted in urban, suburban and rural settings in the United States, Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom, and, more recently, parts of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. A 2024 survey cited by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy reported more than 300 CLTs in the United States, including 308 CLTs in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, up from 289 in 2021.

Common land is collective land (sometimes only open to those whose nation governs the land) in which all persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel.

A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is usually called a commoner.

In Great Britain, common land or former common land is usually referred to as a common; for instance, Clapham Common and Mungrisdale Common. Due to enclosure, the extent of common land is now much reduced from the hundreds of square kilometres that existed until the 17th century, but a considerable amount of common land still exists, particularly in upland areas. There are over 8,000 registered commons in England alone.

The Landworkers' Alliance (LWA) is an organisation in the United Kingdom representing small farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers established in 2012 under the name Via Campesina UK, and incorporated 2015. The organisation campaigns for better food and land-use systems.

The organisation works internationally on topics such as food sovereignty through membership of the international peasants advocacy organisation, Via Campesina, which represents over 200 million peasants, farmers and land-based workers through 182 member organisations. The LWA is one of two organisations in the UK affiliated to Via Campesina, the other being the Scottish Crofting Federation.

They launched a manifesto for tackling rural inequality at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in 2016, and are twinned to US based Farm Hack to bring their model of supporting new farmers to the UK.

The organisation has been critical of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), saying that Defra is preferential to Corporate farming and Agribusiness. On 17 April 2014, the LWA held a protest outside the headquarters of Defra. In June, the LWA welcomed the dismissal of Owen Paterson as Environment Secretary.

In February 2014, The Economist hosted a summit regarding food insecurity in Africa. Only one farmer was permitted to attend the event and representatives of LWA were excluded as none of them could afford the high entry fee.

The LWA supports land reform to hinder and regulate large estates. In July 2024, the LWA held a protest against Discovery Land Company's purchase of the 8,000-acre Taymouth Castle estate to turn it into a luxury resort, and advocate for stronger regulations on large estates. The LWA said the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill going through the Scottish Parliament was not enough to curb large estates and protect the interest of locals against the "super rich".

Advocates of land reform in Britain have included the 17th-century Diggers, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Jesse Collings. Currently the Labour Land Campaign promotes the case for a land value tax, one of the results of which would be some land reform. The Green Party of England and Wales and the Scottish Green Party support land value tax. Currently aristocrats still own a third of England and Wales.

Land ownership in the United Kingdom is distributed in a Pareto-like distribution, with a relatively small number of organisations and estates, and to a lesser extent people, owning large amounts, whether by area or value, and much larger numbers owning small amounts or no land at all.