3.The Act will largely implement the recommendations of the Scottish Law Commission Report on Abolition of the Feudal System (Scot Law Com No 168). It will abolish the feudal system of land tenure. Land previously held feudally will be converted into simple ownership. Vassals will become owners and superiors will disappear. All remaining feuduties will be extinguished as will any obligation to pay redemption money under the Land Tenure Reform (Scotland) Act 1974.
4.Real burdens (i.e. conditions on land) in feudal deeds (such as restrictions on the use to be made of property) will cease to be enforceable by superiors. Rights of enforcement of third parties - e.g. owners of other flats in a tenement whose properties are protected by the burden - will not be affected. What will be extinguished by the Act is the superior’s right to enforce the burden. Some feudal real burdens, however, will be preserved as ordinary real burdens and so will then be subject to the existing law on real burdens generally. They will be in the same position as real burdens created in an ordinary disposition. The preserved burdens will be classified in three categories: neighbourhood burdens (where the right to enforce the burden is reallotted to other land), conservation burdens and maritime burdens. The superior’s right to enforce in another category – common facilities burdens – will be converted into a right for whoever owns the land intended to be protected by those burdens. In many cases, those owners have such rights under the present law, but for the case where they might not, this will protect them.
5.Compensation will be payable to superiors for the loss of the right to feuduties on the same basis as compensation is payable under the Land Tenure Reform (Scotland) Act 1974: it will be paid by the former vassals. Compensation will also be available for the loss of the right to certain real burdens which reserve development value to the superior – where the price was reduced or waived altogether in return for the burden. Compensation will not be payable for the loss of the bare superiority interest itself – and so for the loss of the right to charge vassals for waivers of conditions which the superior will no longer have a right to enforce.
6.Certain other archaic forms of land tenure and payments will be abolished. Entails, already defunct in practice, will also be abolished. Baronial titles will be separated from the land. The Act provides for the repeal of 46 entire Acts, as well as over 300 sections and Schedules and many obsolete and unnecessary words in other Acts. The Act provides for a prohibition on the granting of leases of non-residential land for a period exceeding 175 years (residential leases are already restricted to a period of 20 years). It makes new provision for conveyancing and the ownership of land in Scotland. Some of the reforms and repeals are not strictly consequential on the abolition of the feudal system.
Explanatory Notes The Act