The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) welcomed yesterday’s announcement by the Crofting Commission that there had been 510 new entrants to crofting in 2022/23. The announcement further stated that 46% of those new entrants were women and 29% were under the age of 41.
“As an organisation, we have long known that there is significant demand for crofts and have campaigned that more should be done to enable new entrants to access croft land. The figures released by the Crofting Commission demonstrate that demand,” stated SCF chair, Jonathan Hedges.
Mr Hedges continued, “The fact that 29% of these are young crofters is very positive news but there is still much more work to do to increase the availability of crofts to this age group, as well as keeping them affordable, allowing young families to continue to live and work in rural communities.”
“We call on the Scottish Government to consider what else can be done to support this progress.”
The SCF remains the only organisation dedicated to campaigning for crofters and for the future of crofting and we would very much encourage those new entrants to join our membership and help support our work so that we can do everything we can to protect their future.
