Melanie Ballantyne

This Practice Note summarises the various types of access rights in Scotland and issues that may arise in relation to access in property transactions and developments including the extent of publicly adopted roads, ransom strips, servitudes for access, public rights of way, the right to roam and tenement access rights.

This Practice Note considers how to deal with rights of pre-emption in Scotland. It identifies the types of rights of pre-emption that may be encountered and details how to deal with these as part of a conveyancing transaction. This Practice Note does not cover rights of pre-emption created in leases.

This Practice Note sets out some of the more common issues which may arise during site assembly and procuring vacant possession of land in Scotland for development purposes, including access rights, servitudes for utilities, dealing with real burdens, rights of pre-emption and the community right to buy, boundaries, archaeological features and human remains, sites of special scientific interest (SSSI), environmental clean-up liability, coal and mining issues, telecommunication code issues and securing vacant possession.

This Practice Note sets out general drafting issues to consider when dealing with suspensive conditions in missives in Scotland and considers specific suspensive conditions relating to surveys, planning, title, finance, seller’s works, the community right to buy and licensing with reference where relevant to the Property Standardisation Group (PSG) offer to sell.

This Practice Note summarises the different types of option agreements to purchase property in Scotland, the requirement for a longstop date and the conflicting interests of landowner and developer. Consideration is given to the benefits of securing an option agreement and a comparison is made between option agreements and promotion agreements.

This Practice Note considers the use of real burdens in Scotland (including the Tenement Management Scheme and the Development Management Scheme) to make provision for maintenance obligations, principal issues to consider when drafting real burdens for maintenance and the distinction between real burdens and servitude condition.

This Practice Note considers suspensive conditions in missives in Scotland, including when they are used, how they differ from options and resolutive conditions, issues to consider relating to suspensive conditions when acting for a purchaser or seller, who benefits from a suspensive condition, who can waive or purify it, longstop dates and when risk passes.

This Style is a report on title for a purchase of heritable property in Scotland for development purposes. This is the main part of the report and our Style occupational lease report (if applicable on the acquisition of the development site) is designed to be appended to this report where appropriate. There are optional provisions for appending a specialist planning report.

This Style is an occupational lease report (where the report is to be by exception to a full report on a standard form lease for the property) for use on a purchase of property in Scotland for investment or development purposes. It is designed to be used either as a stand-alone report or as a schedule to be annexed to our report on title for development site acquisitions.

This Style is an occupational lease report for use on a purchase of property in Scotland for investment or development purposes subject to occupational leases. It is designed to be used either as a stand-alone lease report or as a schedule to be annexed to our report on title for development site acquisitions.

This Style is an occupational lease schedule for use on a purchase of property for development purposes. It is designed to be annexed to our report on title to give a brief overview of the key terms of tenancies, as an addition to the full occupational lease reports for a transaction.

This Style provides suspensive conditions for missives in Scotland for relating to measurements, surveys, planning permission, necessary consents, availability of utilities and services, obtaining funding and satisfaction of title.

This Style is for use in connection with an option agreement where the buyer wishes to secure the option to enable the option to be noted on the title sheet to the property by reference to the standard security. Any third party purchaser of the seller’s interest will become aware of the existence of the option when carrying out title due diligence on the property. It does not allow the buyer to take title to the property in the event of default of the seller.