Help with Your Crofting Census

It’s that time of year again. Time to complete your crofting census.

A few clients have contacted me over the past few weeks to obtain advice on their crofting census forms. This got me thinking that a good way of thanking my clients for their business since the firm was launched, would be to offer to assist with their census forms FOR FREE.

So, providing that your circumstances are not (too) complex, and your form does not require extensive or protracted work, if you send it in to me by 12 noon on Friday 23 March 2018, I will liaise with you to complete the form and lodge it at no cost to you.

If you are going to take advantage of this offer, it would be appreciated if you could email (I prefer email but if that doesn’t work for you, please let me know you will be posting) your form to me, with the undernoted details, as soon as possible.

If you are not an existing client, I would still like to help you with your census form. If you instruct me by 12 noon on Friday 23 March 2018, I will complete and submit your census form on your behalf for a restricted fee of £20 plus VAT.  Again, this offer is on the basis that the form is straightforward and does not become complex and / or protracted, and again if you wish to take this offer up, please email me with the undernoted information, just as soon as possible.

In either case, I am always happy to assist with more complex cases, and I can discuss costs, timescale etc for these if you give me a ring or drop me an email.

More About the Census

The Crofting Commission have now issued all forms (one per croft) for the year 2017/2018, and the deadline to return them is 31 March 2018.

The census is a relatively new development; being borne out of the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (s. 10 if you are interested). The intention is to “establish a clear picture of the current state of crofting and enable the Commission to build up the evidence base for the value of crofting” (quote taken from Commission’s crofting census page).

The Commission’s factsheet on the census makes for interesting reading, with over 13,000 forms returned last year; a return rate of 76% (total forms issued 17,471).

Of those forms returned:-

85% of crofters specified that they were resident on their croft

82% of crofters said they cultivated their croft (or put it to another purposeful use)

76% said they did not neglect their crofts

In some circumstances, you may not receive a census form even although you may be expecting one. This might be because you are not an owner-occupier crofter or tenant crofter, but the landlord of a vacant croft. Alternatively, the Register of Crofts may not have been updated to show you as having an interest in your croft.

Conversely, you may have received a census form when you did not expect to. There are also a few explanations for this; perhaps you have sold your croft but the Register of Crofts has not yet been updated, or perhaps the form is in relation to  grazing share or deemed croft and you didn’t realise that these are now considered to be separate crofts in their own right.

I’d love to help and am easiest to contact by email – eilidh@camus.scot

Alternatively, you can call me: 07876 513404.

Note Referred to:-

Name of client/s

Full postal address of client/s

Date of birth

All relevant telephone numbers

Email address

Name of croft/s