The body that serves as landlord for Crown property in Scotland faces a review by MSPs after its leading figures appeared at Holyrood yesterday.
The chairman of the Crown Estate, Ian Grant, who is also its Scottish Commissioner, pleaded yesterday with members of the Rural Development Committee not to intervene in the way it operates.
He claimed that handing over its estates or seaboard portfolio to anyone else, such as local authorities, would force them to buy in the expertise to operate them and would not be cost-effective.
But his pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears with SNP, Labour and LibDem members of the committee more convinced than ever that the body has failed to replicate in its own structures the devolution settlement in the UK.
Mr Grant offered to report to the committee on an annual basis, but insisted that the current structure was good for Scotland because it gave access to capital investment drawn from a UK-wide organisation.
Criticism of the Crown Estate came earlier this month when councillors from six councils in the Highland area as well as Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the local authority umbrella group Cosla told the committee of a "quite extraordinary" lack of accountability. Mr Grant today insisted it had a good record and said it had acknowledged the need to put its message across better. He told Tory MSP John Scott: "We believe the Crown Estate is operating in a beneficial way for Scotland."
But LibDem MSP Mike Rumbles questioned why the body raised more money than it spent in Scotland, and convener Roseanna Cunningham said the three senior officials who were present yesterday appeared to have "a Westminster mindset".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article