Dealing with rights of access in property transactions—Scotland

Produced in partnership with Emma Gray of Blackadders , Stuart King of Blackadders and Melanie Ballantyne of Blackadders

Practice notes

Scottish Law

Dealing with rights of access in property transactions—Scotland

Produced in partnership with Emma Gray of Blackadders , Stuart King of Blackadders and Melanie Ballantyne of Blackadders

Practice notes

Scottish Law

Ownership, leasing or any other permitted use of land normally requires access to it to obtain the benefit of the land. The public are allowed to use roads and footpaths adopted by local authorities and, if the land in question borders an adopted road, access should be straightforward. If access is required over another person’s land, reliance on common law or statute may be possible but purchasers will generally seek some form of contractual agreement or servitude to be put in place where none exist.

If land is common or joint property, no separate rights of access are required by any of the owners to access or cross the land.

This Practice Note sets out the common access issues which might be encountered in property transactions in Scotland and the issues which a seller’s and buyer’s solicitor might be required to address. The same issues may equally arise in lease transactions as between landlord and tenant’s solicitors but for ease of reference

Emma Gray

Blackadders

Emma trained and spent the first 13 years of her career in with Burness Paull prior to joining Blackadders in 2013 to head up the Commercial Property team. Emma is highly experienced in all aspects of commercial property including acquisitions and disposals, developments and investment work and landlord and tenant work (with wide ranging experience in both the office and retail and leisure sectors).

Over the years Emma has particularly enjoyed acting for clients in the retail and leisure sector where she has considerable expertise. Being dual qualified under Scots and English law, Emma enjoys working on transactions with UK wide portfolios. This is particularly welcomed by clients in the retail sector with a national presence.

Emma offers extensive experience in property finance, acting for lenders in secured lending transactions. Clients value her “can do”, commercial approach. Emma also acts for a number of large scale housing developers and also for landowners of strategic development land with large scale housing and mixed use projects.

Areas of Practice: Commercial Property (landlord and tenant, property finance, property development, house builder, property investment, retail and leisure).

Stuart King

Blackadders

Melanie Ballantyne

Director, Commercial Property, Blackadders

Melanie is a highly experienced commercial property lawyer with over 25 years of knowledge and skills in all aspects of commercial property work. Melanie has specialised in the acquisition and site assembly for a number of blue riband housing developers and social housing providers, Scotland wide. Melanie has also acted for a number of Registered Social Landlords over the years. Melanie possesses a proven track record and is very good at establishing and maintaining very strong relationships with her clients to ensure commercial alignment and project delivery. Melanie is pragmatic in approach whilst maintaining client value. She has deep industry knowledge and commercial acumen and ensures clients needs are exceeded.

WORK HIGHLIGHTS

Melanie has recently acted for a developer at their two new town Scottish sites in numerous acquisitions and sales for both private and social housing. This involved setting up the development and delivering the first of the Plot sales at one of their Sites as well as the acquisition of several other phases for the developer. Melanie was responsible for delivering a much enhanced reporting service to the client and a much more client focused approach.
Melanie is highly experienced in landlord and tenant leasing work as well as acquisitions and sales of all types of commercial property and has acted for commercial developers in the acquisition and sale of commercial property development sites.
Melanie has acted for a wide range of blue riband housing developers on a large range of sites over many years. This involved the acquisition and sales of sites for both private and social housing and the setting up and onward sales of the plots.
Melanie has also acted for a number of Registered Landlords in the acquisition of sites for shared equity sales and mid market rent.

Jurisdiction(s):

United Kingdom

Key definition:

Ownership definition

What does Ownership mean?

The term ownership denotes a wide array of rights over property.

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