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21 Aug 2018
Scottish tenants fail to take advantage of improvements amnesty
With just six months left of the amnesty for recording tenant’s improvements, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association (STFA) has suggested more than half of Scotland’s tenant farmers are in danger of running out of time to complete the process.
The amnesty was part of the 2016 Land Reform Act, which created a mechanism enabling landlords and tenants to make a definitive record of improvements even if proper procedures were not followed.
The amnesty began on June 13, 2017, and will expire in just over six months’ time on June 12, 2020.
STFA chairman Christopher Nicholson said: “We have spent the last week meeting and talking to tenants up and down the country and it has become plain that although most of those who attended the meetings had either finished their amnesties or were working on them, they are in the minority, and the vast bulk of tenants have not even made a start.
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“The importance of the amnesty cannot be stressed enough. Not only is it a once in a lifetime opportunity to make good some of the mistakes of the past and ensure investments made by generations of tenants are officially recognised, it is also key to using many of the new provisions in the 2016 Act and to the future of your tenancy.
“In short, there will never be another amnesty and future generations may well live to regret that their forebears neglected this golden opportunity to put everything in order.”
Mr Nicholson said his experience was the amnesty procedure took around six months, so anyone wanting to meet the June 12 deadline has no time to spare.
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