Property sales

National forest land is the forests, open land and other property owned by Scottish Ministers on behalf of the nation, and managed by Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS).

Surplus land and other property is offered for sale as part of the overall management of the national forest estate. This is to help deliver the Scottish Forestry Strategy.

Notification of sales to communities and other bodies

The National Forest Land Scheme (NFLS) gives communities, housing bodies and Non-Governmental Organisations a preferential opportunity to acquire surplus property before it is offered for sale on the open market.

This is done by first giving communities and other bodies prior notification of the sale. Current notifications are listed in the table below. Communities also have certain legal rights to apply to buy any land for sale under the Community Right to Buy provisions (external link).

NFLS notification table

List of current Community Council Notifications (PDF 11kb).

Current sales

Property which has been notified under the National Forest Land Scheme, and which has not received any expressions of interest, is advertised for sale on the open market. The sales page shows all property currently on the open market for sale:

View the current sales page.

Repositioning programme 2011 - 2013

Our sales programme as agreed by Ministers is £10m/year from plantation repositioning sales for the financial years 2012/13 to 2013/14, plus surplus asset disposals to the value of a few £million per year.

The repositioning sales map (PDF 974k) and the associated repositioning schedule (PDF 16k) identify the plantations that we are considering selling in the 2012/13 financial year. Our annual programme over this period will be drawn from this list. Marketing of some of the plantations shall commence towards the end of 2011.

The map and schedule include some plantations which were part of earlier repositioning programmes but which were not sold. The sales page shows the plantations currently for sale.

The repositioning programme is formally notified under the terms of our National Forest Land Scheme. The NFLS notification list (PDF 9k) shows the NFLS formal notifications currently underway.

For further information, please see our page on the re-positioning programme.

Sales that are not notified

Unless there is known community interest, we will not notify sales such as:

Sales of houses or other developed sites to the sitting tenant
Sales providing public benefit, such as road-widening schemes
Exchanges of forest or open land to rationalise boundaries or landholdings
Sales of small areas of land to the adjoining owner.

Boundary adjustments and sale or lease of small areas of land

Read our policy (PDF 41k) on dealing with direct requests from neighbours or other private interests wishing to acquire part of the National Forest Estate.